Living Marxism: No. 102, July 1997

"WANKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE" SEEMS TO BE MARTIN BELL'S SLOGAN' Ex-Tory minister Neil Hamilton on sleaze and 'the death of politics'

WAR

CRIMINAL

OR

WHIPPING

BOY?

LIVING MARXISM LM102

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic talks to Thomas Deichmann LM 02 The mag ITN wants to gag

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TRUTH

is isa here LM Subscribe Back issues 97

EXCLUSIVE:

The picture that fooled the world; Dunblane heretics; The Holocaust obsession; Jack Straw's criminal record; Evolutionary psychology: Censors and sensibilities 98 'Good lies make bad news; The mag ITN wants to gag; Irvine Welsh on ecstasy; Why I'm not proud to be Irish; Looking forward to the general election?; Bernard Manning London WIN 3XX; phone (0171) 278 7699; fax (0171) 278 9755; e-mail [email protected] 99 The counselling industry; ITN v LM: threats, writs and videotape; The right to be offensive; Should failed students sue?; Send in the clones: In defence of Dolly; Larry Flynt 100 Whatever happened to freedom?; Nightmare on Downing Street; The picture that fooled the world: New revelations; Libel laws: Censorship for hire; Crash producer hits back I01 Thou Shalt Not: the Tony Blair Commandments; Hutu refugees: blood on whose hands?; LM v ITN: there are camps, and there are concentration camps; Who made freedom a dirty word?; Monkey art

PAGE 3

MICK HUME

4 6 LM-mail 8 11 12 19 20 26 29 33 ITN on trial 34 37 38 intelligence? 42 47

OVER PHOTO: SHONE/REX FEATURES

EDITOR:

ALT.CULTURE:

Books:

DESIGN:

PRODuCTION•

→ LM V ITN

NEIL HAMILTON INTERVIEW

James Heartfield "Shooting is golf with guns' Jennie Bristow TABOOS: Child labour, new danger?

Norman Lewis the next step conference OPINION: Ann Bradley Hong Kong goes home Sheila Parker Popping mad about alcopops Jennie Bristow

' ACCUSE': RADOVAN KARADZIC INTERVIEW

Thomas Deichmann Put the war crimes tribunal in the dock Helen Searls Thomas Deichmann The dope sheet that duped the world Graham Barnfield SECOND OPINION: Dr Michael Fitzpatrick FUTURES EXCHANGE: Do genes influence Dr Stuart Derbyshire, James Heartfield

ALT.CULTURE.SUMMER SPECIAL

Bullfights, Cricket, Pride, Long lunches, Gin, Surfing, Sun, and Cannes

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

The good Green lie LM102 Mick Hume Andrew Calcutt James Heartfield

EDITORIAL:

Alex Cameron, JP Graphics

EMAIL

Dave Chapman,

WWW:

Mark Bowman • This is a double issue.

Back in September. Enjoy.

PUBLISHED BY:

Informinc, BM Informinc, London, WCIN 3XX (0171) 278 9908 [email protected] www.informinc.co.uk → 'IT is suing Living Marxism magazine over its publication of the article by Thomas Deichmann about IT's Bosnia reporting ('The Picture That Fooled the World, LM97, February 1997)...A major news broadcaster is using libel laws to thwart an open press and this has serious implications for journalists. The days of Robert Maxwell seem to be with us again....We encourage all journalists to support LM against the libel writ and defend a free press and open debate.' Tessa Mayes, Noam Chomsky. Phillip Knightley, Roy Greenslade, Auberon Waugh, Charlotte Raven, Tim Gopsill, Geoffrey Goodman, Toby Vanessa Thorpe, SJ Taylor, Linda Melvern, David Monaghan, Gavin Hills and David Northmore, letter to the Spectator, 3 May 1997 → 'it is a shame [ITN] did not choose to seek redress against Living Marxism in a television confrontation-on BBC, sayrather than issuing writs and apparently silencing discussion of a complex situation.

Harold Evans, former editor of the Times and Sunday Times, quoted in the Guardian, 28 May 1997 → 'But the IT writ has effectively silenced the debate raised by the article....NUJ Deputy Ecclestone commented: "I don't know the truth of the allegation, but I do think journalists might be humble enough to admit they might be wrong, and discuss it sensibly rather than hysterically."' Tim Gopsill (editor), The Journalist, May/June 1997 → 'Sadly, the supporters of Living Marxism's attack on Penny Marshall and lan Williams (the two reporters who were first into the camps) offer no sympathy to them. They seem damned because they work for a large news organisation.

How much better, in the "giant versus dwarf" debate, if Marshall and Williams were to fund the whole case themselves and present it as two principled journalists harassed by a relatively affluent group whose heroes range from Saddam Hussein to Neil Hamilton.'

Richard Tait, IT editor-in-chief, 'We did not fool the world', Spectator 24 May 1997 → 'Even in our victim-obsessed age, Richard Tait's claim that his people at poor little ITN (revenues £88m a year) are being "harassed" by the "relatively affluent" Living Marxism (£2.50 a month) is an exceptionally pathetic plea martyrdom. Presumably the libel writs and gagging orders which I have received from IT's lawyers Biddle and Co (well-known champions of the poor and oppressed) are Tait's idea of counselling for bullies: Mick Hume, LM editor, letter to the Spectator 31 May 1997 → Support the LM libel appeal, the Off the Fence Fund-see back page ad for details • JP Graphics Ltd, BM JP Graphics, London WCIN 3XX, subscriptions (0171) 278 7699 • US mailing address: LM, PO Box 769, Murray Hill Station, New York, NY 10156 • Distributed in the UK by Comag Magazine Marketing, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex, UB7 7QE; hone: West Drayton 01895) 444055: Fax 01895) 455 255; Telex 881 3787 • Distributed i he USA by Ingram Periodicals Inc, 1226 Heil Quaker Boulevard, Post Office Box 7000 La Vergne, TN 37086-7000; Phone (615) 793 5522 and Bernhard DeBoer Inc, 113 East Centre Street, Nutley. New Jersey 07110; Phone arodruck, Frankfurt, Germany • ISSN 0955-2448 July/August 1997. Unsolicited manuscript are welcome, but can only be returned if an SAE is enclosed Young, Cosmo Landesman, General Secretary Jake for (201) 667 9300 • © copyright LM • Printed by

RETURN OF THE

LEFT? ERR, RIGHT

NO HOLIDAYS, NO CHIPS, NO BALL

MICK HUME

Editor 'We won't just force Gina to find a job. We'll review her life?

THAT WAS LABOUR MP HELEN BRINTON,

telling the Sun how Tony Blair's welfare-towork scheme would help women like Gina Stokes, a 31-year-old single mother of four children. Brinton's message—'We will review your life'-ought to be broadcast to the nation as the mission statement of the meddling New Labour government. Anybody who doubted what New Labour would be like, or who thought that LM magazine was mad to say they would be even more authoritarian than the Tories, should now wake smell the Blairite coffee (decaff, and up skimmed milk, sugar-free). Every day seems to bring news of a New Labour proposal to review our lives and start supervising some other aspect of the way we live.

New Labour's crusaders have made it clear that they are against all forms of larging it. In their eyes, decent citizens should not demand more money, more fun or more freedom, and they want to put a stop to any dirty habits that the rest of us sinners might enjoy. It is an attitude summed up by the government's new plans to impose stricter speed limits and other controls on driving. not deal with real These measures will traffic problems or improve the transport system-that would require an injection of cash, which is a four-letter word to the Treasury. No, New Labour's car-bashing proposals are really about getting across a broader message to the public: slow down, restrain yourself, and respect the limits set by government experts, not just whilst you are driving but whilst you are living. (The Advertising Standards Authority displayed the same spirit of 1997 when it ruled a tight-arsed Citroen car advert to be irresponsible, on the July/August a 199) grounds that 'the smile on the driver's face would be seen as relating to the enjoyment of unsafe speed'.) When it comes to children, New Labour's nanny tendencies have been given even freer rein. Remember those long summer holidays, the weeks of freedom that were the best thing about being a kid? Forget them. Education chief David Blunkett wants to abolish the summer break for thousands of children, and give them extra lessons instead, along with strict orders that they must 'enjoy' the experience.

Blunkett has also announced plans to make school dinners more 'balanced' (ie, boring), while Home Secretary Jack Straw is finalising his child curfew scheme, designed to stop the nation's youth burning off their brown rice-fuelled energy in after-school mayhem. No holidays, no chips, no ball games; New Labour, That is a flavour of what New Labour would like life to become in Blair's Britain. Then you read the papers and watch the news, and discover that everybody is talking about a 'new Socialist order across Europe' (Sunday Times, 8

TRUE, THE FORMER COMMUNISTS OF

the Democratic Left dominate the government in Italy, the Socialist-Communist election victory in France followed New Labour's triumph, and even in Germany the Social Democrats seem to have the "invincible' Chancellor Kohl on the ropes. If this is 'the return of the left', however, I only know that I am not left wing. The opinion makers who now talk about the 'resurgent left' make the mistake of assuming that the traditional left-right divide still exists, and so try to fit new developments into the old political framework. But, times have changed far more than these commentators realise, with the result that their analytical equipment is completely out of date.

THE SUPPOSITION THAT POLITICS IS

still organised around the clash between left and right is quite wrong. New Labour represents

NEW

an entirely new political formation, much closer to Bill Clinton's New Democrats in the USA than to anything recognised as British socialism in the past. It still (just about) bears the name 'Labour', in the same way as Blair's spiritual heartland is still called Islington'. But neither the gentrified London borough nor the rebuilt Labour Party has much else in common with its working class antecedents.

The old left was finally buried almost a decade ago in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. The end of the Cold War destroyed more than the Soviet model, it killed off the credibility of all state socialist doctrines. The free-market right was triumphant, and the left was never supposed to come back. But the new order hardlv lasted long enough to finish the celebratory champagne.

MEDIA MONSTERS

As we have examined before in LM, the West soon discovered that, in breaking the mould of Cold War politics, it had seriously damaged the institutions and ideologies of the traditional right as well as the old left. The entire Western political system experienced a crisis of legitimacy, and a power vacuum opened up at its heart. This vacuum is now being filled, at least temporarily, by the reemerging parties of the European left. But they are not what they were.

THE LEFT IN ITALY AND THE UK MAY BE

further down the road to reconstruction than their French counterparts, but they are all heading in the same direction. It is just that New Labour has already arrived. Free of any ideological baggage, Blair's party is the genuine product of the times in which it has been fast-bred.

It is a vehicle for all of the insecurities, panics and prejudices of our anxious age. That is why New Labour's instinct is to clamp down and impose limits at every turn, to put safety before freedom, lower society's sights and dampen its passions wherever possible. Almost every issue becomes a question of law 'n' order, almost every policy a compulsory supervision order.

The authoritarian streak which Blair has already exhibited in relation to an issue like single mothers has led a lot of commentators who are stuck in the old groove to suggest that

NO FUN

LABOUR,

Labour has 'moved to the right. But New Labour is nothing so predictable as an imitation Tory Party. That is what makes it so much more dangerous. Unrestrained by any links with the past practices of British politics, it is free to go much further than the Thatcherites would have dared. In short, New Labour has a licence to review our lives.

Some dreamers would have us believe that the changes are only skin deep at the top of the Labour Party, and that the instincts of the rank and file are still with the left.

To dispose of that notion, you need only compare the kind of causes that get Blair's backbenchers going today with those that excited the last generation of Labour MPs to find themselves in a majority, 30 years ago. Then they fought for liberalising reforms on big social issues like abortion, homosexuality and divorce. Now they will back small-minded killjoy campaigns seeking to ban smoking, hunting, alcopops, gun clubs, filthy jokes or

THE LEFT USED TO DEMAND MORE; NOW

it is considered radical to call for less, as in heritage secretary Chris Smith's demand that Camelot bosses take a pay cut and the warning from environmental minister Michael Meacher that we all need to make 'sacrifices'.

IN THIS ISSUE OF LM MAGAZINE, WE ARE

happy to publish exclusive interviews with ex- Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, and former Conservative minister Neil Hamilton.

The two of them have little in common— except that both have been turned into monsters by the media. You do not have to agree with all that Karadzic and Hamilton say in order to see that the witch-hunts now being conducted reveal far more about the society we live in than about Take Hamilton, branded Mr Sleaze and accused of being the biggest crook in British politics. Who really believes that he is the black sheep among the 658 MPs in the House of Commons? It should be obvious that Hamilton has simply been allotted the role of nineties fall-guy by New Labour and its media pals.

In some ways, Hamilton the capitalists' friend is to Tony Blair what miners' leader Arthur Scargill was to Margaret Thatcher. Of course, Hamilton is accused of taking backhanders from businessmen rather than backing picket-line violence. But like Scargill in the eighties, he has been set up as an appropriate scapegoat for his times, to be ritualistically slaughtered by those who wish to persuade British society that right and respectability are on their side.

FOR HIS PART, RADOVAN KARADZIC HAS

been indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Tribunal at The Hague. But why should Karadzic be singled out as the world's number one war criminal? He looks to us like a typical East European leader, and certainly has far less blood on his hands than many of his powerful accusers in the West.

No, minister, what we all need is to get -first and foremost, more freedom to morelive as independent adults who can think and act for themselves. What we need is the New Labour supervisors out of our affairs, the 'left' killjoys and ministers for misery off our backs. Blair might only have been in office for a couple of months. But we and our children could already do with a long summer holiday from New Labour's plans to review our lives, and a big helping of liberty with It seems that Karadzic is to Bill Clinton what Libya's Colonel Gaddafi was to Ronald Reagan: a convenient whipping boy against whom to demonstrate US power and the authority of the civilised West over the rest of the world. Where Gaddafi was branded a Soviet agent and said to sponsor international terrorism in the eighties, so in the nineties Karadzic is compared to the Nazis and charged with ethnic cleansing. The accused and the accusations change with the times, but the consequence of the witch-hunt remains much the same: the reaffirmation of the right of America and its allies to dominate the globe in the role of Good Guys against Evil Empires.

LM MAGAZINE MAY NOT CARRY A

torch for Tories or Serbian nationalists. But much more importantly, we are one hundred per cent against witch-hunts, and will not join in the lynching of whoever happens to be set up as society's latest scapegoats. We will have no truck with the childish notion that complex political issues at home or abroad can be reduced to simple morality plays of Good v Evil. And we want nothing to do with the kind of moral correctness which says that those who deprived of a voice. Open debate and free speech are the only tools we have to get at the truth and understand the whole picture.

It is precisely because Karadzic and Hamilton have been demonised that we wanted their interviews, as part of LM's commitment to publish what others want censored. There is no need for us to worry about media monsters.

The monstrous media that made them what they are is an altogether more pressing problem to be dealt with.

THE PICTURE THAT FOOLED

THE WORLD

I would like to express my support both for the stand taken by Living Marxism in refusing to allow ITN et al to silence them, and for the original article, 'The Picture that Fooled the World' (February). I teach at a large FE college in the North East and the original piece coincided with work we were beginning on media representations of reality. The story and Vulliamy's response were used to highlight the issue of news (mis) representation and proved extremely useful. Our student group regards Deichmann's piece as the more credible account. Keep it up.

How can I help?

JIM TATTERSDALE

APATHY AND

ABSTENTION

The comments made in Bruno Waterfield's article ('For better or worse?, April) about not voting, were absolutely pathetic, especially for a 'challenging' political publication. Making people realise there is not really any difference between parties (therefore no real choice) is valid (and positive). Encouraging people not to bother voting is not.

Not voting is playing right into the government's hands. What about a void vote or a protest vote? The article was attacking the parties, not the system of election. So, use the system to attack the parties.

There is enough apathy without encouraging more people to give in.

I always thought LM was dedicated to challenging apathy and ignorance. Maybe you have changed more than just your graphic designers?

VINCENT POLLARD

Peacehaven, East Sussex

THE END OF CLASS

POLITICS?

Mike Belbin (letters, June) berates Frank Füredi (Class politics cannot be rebuilt, regenerated or rescued today, May) for failing to build a social base, presumably among the working class.

Without such a base, says Belbin, LM is guilty of religious idealism.

I noticed that the postal district whence Belbin issues his

LM-MAIL

judgements is London SW3, aka the highly desirable district of Chelsea.

Is Belbin waiting for the miracle that will build a working class base there, or are the barricades up already and I have not heard about it because of a news blackout?

COLIN WHETSTONE

Leicester 'the logical consequence of Frank's article is that all we can do is wait -batten down the hatches until a new political trend sets in'. Wake up, David! If you open your eyes, you will see that a new political trend has set in. It is called New Labour (this is one political advertisement that does not contravene the Trade Descriptions Act), and Füredi's article seemed to me to be about how to combat the 'new political trend' which is to the present, not the past, is the reason why I buy it. If I want to hear about the Liverpool dockers I can go to a labour heritage museum. But with LM, I know I will get a critical angle on the questions that count for today. David complains about LM highlighting an issue like Dunblane. I thought the coverage of the Dunblane anniversary was superb. Here is a topic which sums up the whole package of new politics: censorship, control, a country revelling in victimhood (mourning sickness'), the preoccupation with safety.

LM is fighting today's battles, David, not yesterday's.

ANTHONY TAPLOW

Hammersmith, London

OH DEER,

HUNTING

Kevin Young ('The deer hunter', June) is entitled to weekends up in the hills, drinking whisky with his shooting buddies and warming his hands on freshly-killed deer entrails, if that is what he wants. However he is mistaken to believe that by killing an animal he somehow adds value to its 'dumb existence'. His idea that the deer is ennobled by turning it into a trophy is nonsense.

These were the views of nineteenth century hunters who turned elephant feet into wastepaper July/August e 1997 anthropomorphism. 'experience' (undergo). onto other species.

SANDY STARR

Oxford

FRENCH LETTER

baskets and gorillas' hands into ashtrays. Unfortunately for Kevin, in the process of turning the living animal into a stuffed head mounted on the wall, he not only degrades the animal but himself as well.

I am a strict vegan in my diet, in my clothing, and in the cosmetics that I use. And | completely object to recreational deer hunting.

Surprising, then, that I found myself agreeing with most of the points raised by Helene Guldberg ('Do deer suffer like us?, June). Whether or not deer can be said to suffer from what humans regard as 'stress' is irrelevant. If you are going to object to hunting, it must be on a far more fundamental basis that crude My objection to hunting, and to the attitude expressed by Kevin Young in "The deer hunter', is that the complex pleasure derived by humans from killing other species, regardless of how basic their thought processes are, is not adequate justification for increasing the amount of 'pain' (on a purely physiological basis that they an abortion, can have a profoundly detrimental effect on a woman's life, the refusal of permission to hunt entails nothing more than the denial of an occasional recreational luxury. And unlike culling or vivisection, recreational hunting can be said to afford no obvious benefits to the general human public. Therefore a hunting ban is, to my mind, a sacrifice worth making; and a sacrifice that can be made without having to mistakenly project strictly human qualities The first round of voting in the French elections left most commentators in a state of confusion. When the second round delivered a clear winner in terms of parliamentary seats the previous confusion was resolved into a confident diagnosis: the left, we were told, is resurgent, in France as in Britain. The underlying confusion, however, will continue unresolved. It is a confusion which can be analysed in terms of three parameters. The first is the old left-right divide. Although nearly void of content, it is still functional when it comes to delivering a a template for columnists, who have made much of the Socialist call for a 'tax and spend' (translated as Old Labour) policy against unemployment. Some have read a deep philosophy into this gambit, forgetting that previous Socialist governments were more consistent in budgetary austerity than their right-wing successors. Calls for reflationary measures tend to do the rounds of the parties; it just happened that the Socialists were chiming in on this one when Chirac The second parameter is centre v margins. Broadly speaking the centre are those who vote for the mainstream parties. They tend to be better-off, slightly less disgruntled and more pro-European than the margins, principally represented by the Communists and the Front National, who tend to be more economically vulnerable, more 'conservative' in the sense of clinging to fragments of the status quo (social security provision on the left, border controls and national identity on the right) left-right divide, there might appear to be scope for a reorientation of French politics along a centre v margins axis, except that this in turn is undercut by a third parameter which would have all decent people join a Republican Front' against Le Pen's extremist party. This parameter has the least basis in reality, but it looms large in the imagination of many, mainly on the left, who are disillusioned with the old political allegiances and who need a 'big cause' to fill the vacuum. This means talking up a vulgar old loudmouth like Le Pen as an imminent threat to civilisation. However the French electorate stubbornly fails to oblige, and the FN remains pegged at about 15 per cent of the vote.

The what's NOT on guide nethtt: towwwihtfermw.edouinca.co.uk http:///www.informinc.co.uk

LMONLINE

None of these parameters is strong enough by itself to set a new pattern for French politics, yet each one is strong enough to undercut the other two.

LOUIS RYAN

London

FEEL

YOURSELF

*The truth about testing your testicles' (lune) left me feeling angry and sad. It is stated that only 83 men died of testicular cancer. This is 83 too many. Your article did not state the number of men who were required to have an orchidectomy (removal of testicle). I am sure that if you spoke to these men, they may have been able to tell you that they wish they had been aware of testicular self-examination (TSE).

Why shouldn't good healthcare be about how we look after ourselves? These are our bodies, and we should have the responsibility of looking after them. Women check their breasts, why can't men check their testicles? I hope that most men took no notice of your article, and still perform TSE. Even if it is only one life saved, it is still a life.

MISS REID

Portsmouth Since LM has previously advertised itself as 'the magazine for men and women with balls, I would have thought you would be all for protecting your investment through TSE. Or is it a case of never mind the bollocks, here's the socialist transformation of society?

J ROTTEN

Bromley

WE WELCOME

READERS'

VIEWS AND

CRITICISMS

Write to The Editor, LM, BM InformInc, London WCIN 3XX fax (0171) 278 9844. Letters may be edited for clarity and length SUN BLOCKED: Hackney Borough Council has banned sunbeds from its sports centres and swimming pools (the sun itself having been long since banished from the borough).

Meanwhile health experts have launched a campaign to outlaw unshaded playgrounds from Bristol schools. Campaign sponsors Somerfield claim that pupils are being left to roast in the midday sun'. Is this a cheap alternative to BSE-riddled beef, already banned from schools? FOXY: The Ministry of Defence has announced a review of fox hunting which could lead to the sport being banned on half a million acres of its land. Hunting humans, as in the turkey shoot' of tens of thousands of Iraqis fleeing along the road to Basra in 1991, will presumably remain within MoD regulations. CRACKED: In the re-make of Cracker for American television, forensic psychiatrist Fitz, played by Robert Pastorelli in place of heavyweight Robbie Coltrane, will not be allowed to smoke, although he may toy with unlit cigarettes and he will be depicted as a gambler and a drinker. Smoking, it seems, is now the deadliest sin of all. STUBBED OUT: Smoking is now banned on three sections of Bournemouth beach, which is kept under constant CCTV surveillance.

How long before the council releases a video of scantily-clad men and women caught having a crafty drag? PILLOCKS: actor Warren Clarke (TV cop Andy Dalziel and the fat droog in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange) revealed that the BBC cut the word 'pillock' from Alan Plater's script for Dalziel and Pascoe, and issued a 'note-ette' instructing the cast to tone it down. Since the offending word also appears in Shakespeare's King Lear, no doubt the bard himself will soon feel the point of the Beeb's blue pencil.

WE ARE NOT AMUSED: After HRH complained, BBC2 bosses axed the item in the Dennis Pennis Show in which the bespectacled one asked Princess Anne how many times have you been tossed off by a horse?.

Which prompts a question to the BBC: what's the point of having a 'controversial' TV show with the controversy cut out? The same question goes to Channel 5, which cut a lewd line from stand-up Richard Morton's act at

CREATIVE

CREATIVE

midday sun. The Comedy Store because it referred to the Queen Mother. COVERED: After distributors warned that the image of a topless woman emerging out of the body of a naked man was "risky', the publishers of Creative Technology magazine were obliged to print their June issue with a sheet of white paper covering the front page. The extra cover was deemed necessary even though there were no genitalia in the 'risky' image underneath. It's curtains for Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, then? CORMORANT CULL: After the Angling Times ran a front page in December 1996 headlined 'These birds must be killed' and showing a masked man with a gun next to four dead birds, editor Keith Higginbottom, who has since left the magazine, has been charged with incitement to kill cormorants under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Cormorants, unlike editors, are a protected species under British law. FLESH: The 'flesh detector' produced by an Oxfordshire company has run into teething trouble. The aim of the device is to monitor TV and computer screens and shut them down if too much naked flesh appears, but it has proved unable to discriminate between flesh as in tits and bums, and flesh as in a sumo wrestler's belly or Murray Walker's bald head.

It is clearly a pervert with a twisted mind and should be banned from our living rooms forthwith. SYRINGED OUT: The Gagdet Shop is to stop selling a pen shaped like a syringe after a Brighton teacher led complaints that children were pretending to inject themselves with it. Pupils at her primary school were encouraged to complain to the trading standards authority, the Brighton Evening Argus and the BBC's Watchdog, and the imminent withdrawal of the pen has been heralded as a positive lesson in drugs awareness and citizenship. NO, MINISTER: New Labour's new ministers must not make speeches without submitting them to Number 10 beforehand. But they know they are living in a free country because they can write their censored speeches with any pen they like, and they are still allowed onto the House of Commons terrace in the

Former Tory minister Neil Hamilton talked to James Heartfield about sleaze and

THE WORLD UNITE!"

MARTIN BELL'S SLOGAN'

SCANDAL

'the death of politics'

"WANKERS OF

he first time I ever heard the word sleaze was in 1994, from TV reporter John Pienaar.' Neil Hamilton was Corporate Affairs Minister in the Conservative government, before being embroiled in allegations of fraud and corruption—allegations he strenuously denies-that forced him out of office and eventually led to his defeat at the hands of his anti-sleaze opponent' Martin Bell in the General Election.

I saw my role to represent business in government.' It was a role that the Conservatives had created, to make government more responsive to industry. 'My job was a counter-cultural one, to stop the influence of all the single issue pressure groups on the various ministries. I encouraged everyone in business to come to me and let me be their advocate. I suppose I was the voice of a single issue pressure group if you regard industry as a pressure group. The truth is that Hamilton was always a dyed-in-the-wool Thatcherite, who enthusiastically supported her programme of pro-market policies.

But he says he is not dishonest: he has always been openly right-wing in his opinions. Nor is he a crook—just a Tory. Now, that on its own might be a good enough reason to kick him out, but that was not what happened.

Hamilton did not lose one of the safest Tory seats in the country in an open fight against the government's policies.

Instead he was deposed as part of a histrionic campaign against sleaze, manufactured by the press and supported by a New Labour Party more comfortable with holier-than-thou sermons than political arguments.

The allegations of sleaze originated from Mohamed Al Fayed, the July/august e

SEEMS TO BE

Harrods-owning Egyptian millionaire.

'Fayed's fantasy is that I've betrayed him, and now he is seeking revenge', says Hamilton. As part of his long-running row with Tiny Rowland, the lobbying firm lan Greer Associates on a retainer of £2300 a month.

In particular, Al Fayed was trying to fend off an aggressive investigation by Hamilton knew lan Greer, and indeed he had, twice, been paid introduction fees by Greer for recommending the lobbying firm to clients- Nuclear Company and US Tobacco (ever a sucker for popular causes).

Tory scalp 'I helped lobbyists. I was never paid anything for doing anything for lobbying purposes in the House of Commons. Obviously, now I wish I'd the time I wanted to help him because I thought he had a case.'

Al Fayed's House of Frasier had engaged the Department of Trade and Industry.

-the National had nothing to do with Al Fayed. But at The Guardian has a

PARANOID

OBSESSION

that I am the source of all evil' Fayed's ire was provoked when Hamilton was made minister and, as Hamilton puts it, 'behaved scrupulously by refusing to have anything to do with areas where I had a personal connection'. It was then that Al Fayed started making allegations to the Guardian newspaper which leapt on the chance of grabbing a Tory scalp.

According to Hamilton the Guardian has a 'paranoid obsession that I am the source of all evil. It is psychotic really.

[Ex-Guardian editor] Peter Preston was the original psychotic and [David] Henke was his sidekick. As for Alan Rusbridger', the new Guardian editor, "he is just drunk with his own power'.

Evidence that the Guardian does seem to have an obsessive interest in Hamilton comes in the book Sleaze, an in-house production by top Guardian journalists Ed Vulliamy and David Leigh that is the main source for allegations against Hamilton.

Sleaze is a book that gets carried away with itself, even to the point of alleging

PHOTOS: DAVE CHAPMAN

Image not substance was at issue between Martin Bell (above) and Neil Hamilton MP Michael Grylls. (with wife Christine) carry the costs of the case.

accusations of fraud. that Hamilton's voluble and charming wife was 'provided' for him by his Faust-like mentors, lan Greer and fellow 'Oh that's just silly, interjects Christine Hamilton in genuine disbelief.

'In any event I met Neil long before I met lan or Michael, even Guardian journalists could have worked that out' I am surprised that she has never read the book. 'T've got better things to do', she says. Her husband did read all of the allegations, however, and tried to sue the Guardian for libel but could not Most damaging for Hamilton were Fayed's stories to the Guardian and the Mail. 'Fayed said lan Greer paid me to ask questions—it's just not true. Greer's own documentary evidence to the Downey Committee disproves those allegations. Then Fayed added to his story the allegation that he had had a clerk stuff brown envelopes full of cash for Hamilton to pick up at the reception at House of Frasier. "Those allegations', Tax returns insists Hamilton, 'are untrue and constructed in such a way as to be unproveable and untraceable'. If Fayed's original story of Greer paying Hamilton to ask questions was true, then there ought to have been a financial record of money changing hands. The addition of the anonymous and untraceable 'brown envelopes could have been chosen to facilitate a real fraud, or they could have been chosen to facilitate The Guardian's agenda was revealed in the election, when the paper led the call for an 'independent' candidate to depose Hamilton, a call answered by the veteran BBC war correspondent Martin Bell. 'Bell is a Mandelson construct', says Hamilton. "Tom Stoddart, Blair's official photographer found Bell and

'BELL IS A

MANDELSON

CONSTRUCT'

says Hamilton-'media construct would be just as true persuaded him to stand.' Stoddart is the husband of the Labour MP for Vauxhall, Kate Hoey. 'John Prescott came to Tatton to tell the local Labour Party to stand down their candidate?

Hamilton is preoccupied with Labour's role in stitching him up, but it would be just as true to say that Bell is a media construct. The fantasy of standing above party politics for the 'higher principle' of decency is originally the Guardian's.

The paper's intervention into the Tatton poll was part of a wider disdain for the adversarial politics of parliamentary democracy. As far as the radical intelligentsia at the Guardian are concerned mass politics is a Dutch auction in which the lowest common denominator always wins. The Bell candidacy was an attempt to side-step any political debate in favour of a moralistic and artificial debate about the relative character of the two candidates. 'Wankers of the world unite!" seems to be his slogan', suggests Hamilton. Bell's canvassers were well briefed, and their arguments were all laid out on the Guardian's own election website ("The charges against Neil Hamilton'), which the luckless Hamilton has only just discovered: 'I now see where Martin Bell got all that crap he was spraying round in the election.' Bell's canvassers were briefed to say that 'he's already been convicted on 12 charges', which is not true. "To interpret my behaviour as a deliberate fraud, is itself a fraud', he says. On the Guardian's lead the Bell campaign made much of Hamilton's 'already admitted wrongdoings' but on inspection these prove to be utterly trivial. The one 'misdemeanour' that particularly scandalised the contributors to the Guardian's on-line debate was a tax return from years ago in which Hamilton failed to declare a free flight.

'Everything in the tax return was included or left out on my •

not exactly something to get emotional about

NEIL HAMILTON

10 'Major told us that his was the control of

INFLATION

THOU

SHALT

1 accountant's advice, as he has testified to the Downey inquiry. It comes to something when radicals are reduced to finding fault with a Tory minister's tax returns instead of his policies—especially when the critics are journalists who would naturally never accept a free flight to anywhere.

But of course it is the lack of clear political debate between the parties that has elevated the sleaze issue so high on the agenda. The Guardian knew as well as anybody that New Labour had no intention of departing from the government's pro-market policies. Even Neil Hamilton thinks Blair won the election on a 'macho, radical right-wing programme. All that stuff about single [ Mi02 July/August © 1997

BIGGEST PASSION

mothers! We wouldn't have dared to privatise the welfare state'.

We have witnessed the death of politics, the emergence of centrist in the last government Major getting us all together and telling us that his biggest passion was the control of inflation. Well, controlling inflation is bloodless creature. Blair and Mandelson.. they're just a clique of opportunists, whose only agenda is to be elected and re-elected.

Daily Telegraph and LM these days', he adds. Swampy Hamilton Hamilton is the first to admit that the 'death of politics' started in his own party. 'All those targets of Mrs Bottomley's. It was absolutely ridiculous. We were telling people what they should and should not eat.

transport ministry actually claimed to have helped meet the reduction of suicide any less, you understand, only that they could not gas themselves?

Scott inquiry was hardly about high on about them and it suited the politicians like Major and Blair with no defined political views. I remember early important but it is not exactly something to get emotional about. Blair is another My preferred reading matter is the I remember one cabinet meeting where we were going round the table looking at our ministries' performances and the suicides target by taking the lead out of petrol! Not that people were attempting What Hamilton does not quite grasp is that the moralism of the Martin Bell campaign is precisely what fills the gap when politics is suspended. Instead he puts the rise of the sleaze issue down to the growth of lobbying groups. 'As far as the public is concerned these scandals are of no great consequence. Even the crimes and misdemeanours. All of these scandals just show that politics is full of human beings. It suits journalists to go opposition. But what does Bell think he will be doing after 12 months? What role is there for him? He's not part of any party organisation that will push him to perform.' The Hamiltons are scathing about Bell's lack of political convictions—'he will be running out of fences to sit on'.

In particular they are angry with him for prevaricating over the Manchester airport protest, where Bell's most decisive intervention was to call Surely Neil Hamilton does not support Swampy? 'I sympathise with the protesters' cause—I am totally opposed to the airport expansiontheir illegality.' Christine Hamilton adds that Swampy and Animal are fed, watered and washed by the Tory voters of Tatton'. If the issue of character' really had been the decisive one in Tatton, the Hamiltons, who are much more likeable than the thin-skinned and sanctimonious Martin Bell, would have won hands down. They are both witty- -in person, handling their own troubles with a blend of self-deprecating humour and world-weariness. Recently Christine Hamilton was accused of throwing a wobbly in Gloria Hunniford's dressing room over the script of an interview.

"What dressing room?', she shrugs, fully expecting that lies will be told about her, "The show was filmed in the But likeable as they are, it is difficult to feel sympathy for the Hamiltons.

When their party was in power it rode roughshod over its opponents. You might even think that there was poetic justice in their humiliation, but don't kid yourself that it is real, or popular justice. The consequence of Martin Bell's campaign and victory was that a clique of newspaper editors and media fixers corrupted democratic political debate in a way that the worst Tory could only have dreamed of.

Michael Yardley of the Sportsman's Association, champion of the gun clubs, told Jennie Bristow why shooting sports are safer than ballroom dancing

'SHOOTING IS GOLF WITH GUNS'

SHOOTERS' RIGHTS

ichael Yardley, spokesman for the Sportsman's Association, does not look like your usual militant campaigner of the 199os. Clean shaven, well spoken and often to be seen sporting a tweed jacket, he looks as though he would be more at home nibbling cucumber sandwiches on the lawn than sharing a Beanfeast down a tunnel.

Yet since its inception in October 1996, the Sportsman's Association has won public notoriety as part of the heretic tendency in post-Dunblane Britain. Its 40 oo0 members are passionate in their opposition to bans on handguns and their defence of shooting sports, organising demonstrations of as many as 20 000 people, standing candidates in the general election (Yardley himself stood on an "Anyone but Mellor' ticket in Putney) and popping up for media soundbites in an attempt to make their case heard.

So what exactly is their case? I talked to Michael Yardley on his way back from the shooting range about how he could justify 'guns for fun. He exploded. "That question already presumes that there is something wrong with the shooting sports. I mean, why does someone like fencing or archery or horse racing? Why should we have to justify what we like doing?

You can no more justify the enjoyment you get from shooting than you can justify the enjoyment you get from playing poker or throwing a javelin. You can try and justify it— it's about mind it's about over matter, controlling your immediate environment, it's a sport in which age and sex provide few barriers to participation-but why should you have to say things like that in a free society?'

Okay, okay. But in that case, why should the Sportsman's Association need to exist at all?

Yardley homes in on the hysteria whipped up around guns following the Dunblane tragedy in March 1996. From this moment, he says, the media and politicians have gone out of their way to blacken the name of the shooting game and all those who take part in it.

"The news programmes would actually search out atypical representatives of shooting and were not beyond fabricating the reality of the sport. In one newspaper I saw a feature on a gun club where they had characters wearing balaclavas. That never happens—it is nothing more than a lie? The popular images of shooters, whether they be "some toff blowing pheasants out of the sky or some beer-bellied camouflaged type pretending to be Rambo', completely miss the point about shooting, he says. Shooting is 'golf with guns', and confronting the popular myths about the shooting sports is the principal aim of the Sportsman's Association.

'After the Dunblane tragedy, the line of the traditional shooting organisations was to keep a dignified silence', he explains. 'But it was clear to me that you cannot keep silent in the face of the modern media because silence is taken as guilt. And we have nothing to feel guilty about.'

Yardley has no problems arguing that the shooting sports are entirely respectable, and 'sporting shooters' are among the most law abiding people in society: 'otherwise they wouldn't have licences-do you know how difficult it is to get a licence?' He points out that most crimes using firearms are committed with illegal guns, telling me a story of how, some years ago, he helped an officer from the Metropolitan Police to look at 657 guns used in crimes throughout London. Only one of them had ever been licensed. His conclusion is that the sport of shooting is not dangerous: 'you have more chance of your own bathwater than in drowning falling victim to a legally owned gun—in fact, ballroom dancing is more dangerous than shooting.' And banning guns would only make the problem worse, by 'forcing them underground'. Even so, isn't Yardley being just a tad insensitive to the Dunblane parents? Many would say that their feelings should count for more than the enjoyment of a leisure pursuit by a few well-to-do sportsmen. Explosion number two. "There is nothing insensitive about what I'm saying', he retorts. 'Let's be completely honest- I am sure if I was one of the Dunblane parents I would never want to see a gun again. But in a mature democracy the bereaved don't make the law-they shouldn't make the law. The purpose of law making in this case is to prevent future tragedy, not punish the to innocent or recreate the conditions which make future may tragedies more likely. I am fed up with people saying "what about those parents". The horror they witnessed is unimaginable but in a democracy you cannot just give into the mob.?

Sorry? The mob? Yardley explains himself.

'In the discussion about banning guns, we re not just talking about the Dunblane parents, we're talking about the mob hysteria that was whipped up by the media after the event. It struck me at the time that there was a requirement for a scapegoat after Dunblane, a kind of pagan sacrifice. That sacrifice was us. So I felt it was my duty to fight to get our point across.'

He has found that fight an unfair one, faced with 'extraordinary journalistic bias. 'If you add up the time given to our side of the story in this affair and the time given to Snowdrop, there is little comparison', he complains. For example, when the Duke of Edinburgh made his comments about cricket bats, the Nine O'Clock News gave me 17 pre-recorded seconds whereas Ann Pearston had a live interview lasting 2 minutes and 15 seconds. The other side always has the last word.' He cites another example: the coverage given to the Sportsman's Association demonstration in February 1997.

'I think it's extraordinary that we should get 20 000 people in Trafalgar Square and end up with half an inch of coverage in the Times.'

But Michael Yardley intends to keep on banging away on behalf of sporting shooters. "The rights of shooting people are the rights of the rest of us, he says.

'Even though a lot of people don't understand why we do what we do, they should ask themselves if they really want to give up more of their own freedom for the sake of a piece of ill-founded legislation that will not work.' Yardley: all fired up over gun control

PHOTO: DAVE CHAPMAR

Who really benefits from the growing demands for governments and corporations to 'do something' about child labour in the developing world, asks Norman Lewis

PHOTO: SEAN SPRAGUE/PANOS PICTURES

July/August @ 1997 LMIoz

PHILLIP

CHILD LABOUR,

NEW DANGER?

CARABAO

TABOOS

13 ]he publication of A Sporting Chance, Christian Aid's report on child labour in India's sports goods manuprovoked facturing industry, understandable outcry in Britain.

The report cites examples of how Indian children are exploited in the production of sporting goods for sale in this country. The case of 11-year-old Sonia, who allegedly stitches Manchester United's £39.99 Eric Cantona footballs for an effective wage of six pence an hour, provoked predictable outrage (and loud denials from MUFC's legal department). Clare Short, the Minister of Overseas Development quickly affirmed the New Labour government's commitment to stamping out such exploitation, as part of the humanitarian foreign policy outlined in Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's mission statement, days before Christian Aid's report was published.

A Sporting Chance highlights some very sordid goings on. Case studies reveal how unscrupulous employers capitalise the on docility and helplessness of child labourers: children often work the longest hours and are the worst paid of all labourers, and endure work conditions which expose them to health hazards and potential abuse. The report Wage slavery starts young in Bangkok paints a picture of conditions which stifle children and deny the opportunity for proper physical and mental development. Other recent reports from the World Bank, the International Labour Office and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) suggest that hundreds of millions of children live deprived of the simple joys of childhood and condemned to a life of drudgery seems inconceivable that right-minded individual in our society could possibly condone such practices, nor oppose the demand for Western governments or multinational corporations to take some action to end them.

The issue seems so clear cut that anybody who questions the current campaigns around child labour is likely to run the risk of being branded a child abuser themselves. Nevertheless, there are questions that need to be asked about the outburst of concern in the West over child labour in the developing world. In the first place, what is child labour? There is no internationally agreed definition. UNICEF's The State of the World's Children 1097 calls for an end to 'hazardous child labour', yet admits that emotive term embraces a 'complex reality. The best the report can do is to make an arbitrary distinction between 'work that is beneficial and work that is intolerable' while recognising that 'much child work falls into the grey area between these two extremes'. Countries not only have different minimum-age work restrictions, they also have varying regulations as to what types of labour young people can do. Moreover, in many developing and traditional societies, child labour is an inte gral part of family life, regarded as a vital element both in the economic survival of the family and the socialisation of children. Branding such labour as unacceptable would not only be incomprehensible to these societies, it would also represent a potential threat to the long-term wellbeing of the very children it is designed Secondly, what age constitutes a child? Most people might agree that a six-year old is too young to work, about a 12-year old? The boundaries of childhood are flexible, set by different societies according to differing circumstances. In many developing countries, poverty forces minors to act as breadwinners at an age when they would still be protected as young children in the West. The World Bank's report 'Child labour: issues, causes and Paraguay contribute almost a quarter of the total family income. In India, child labour contributes to more than 20 per cent of the country's GNP. In Peru a significant number of six to 14-year olds are heads of households. The transition to adulthood differs radically from country to country. In the West, it is taken for granted that most children can rely on society to provide free education and healthcare, and can depend on their parents to provide the food, trainers and televisions they need, at least until their late teen years.

In the developing world, however, these are luxuries denied to millions of young people. Indeed for many of these children, working is the only way to gain a modicum of education and self-esteem and some longer-term prospects.

The problem with the current debate about child labour is that it rests on the underlying assumption that there is such a thing as a universal childhood; an international standard which can be applied equally in all circumstances. But that is a fiction. In reality, what appears to be an expression of universal concern for the world's children is an arrogant imposition of Western concepts of and its associated values upon the rest of the world.

All of the professional bodies and agencies concede that the overwhelming reason why children in the South work is in order to alleviate the dire poverty afflicting their families. This is why child labour is concentrated in Asia and Africa, which together account for more than •

TABOOS

1 90 per cent of total child employment. And yes, children are often forced into work by their parents. According to one study, parents were responsible for pushing 62 per cent of child labourers into work; children made their own decision to work in only eight per cent of cases. Children in these countries often contribute more to a household than they consume, in direct contrast to their counterparts in the West. The idea of parents seeing their children as economic assets to be sold in labour the horrifies a Western audience. But before we get on our moral high horses we should realise that there is nothing new about such a harsh reality. During the industrial development of the Victorian era, British children made a similar contribution to family incomes as children do in present day Peru or Paraguay. The value of the male breadwinner's wages were so reduced as a result of the introduction of machinery, that entire families including women and children were forced onto the labour market in an effort to recoup the lost earnings. The 'free market' which condemned parents to become child slave traders in Britain last century, operates with the same ruthless logic in the developing world today. Why else would Peru or Paraguay or anywhere in the developing world send their children out to work in hazardous conditions?

Just posing this question reveals one of the more odious unstated assumptions informing Western concerns with child labour. By assuming a universal childhood, the discussion sets up a standard of behaviour by which to judge people in Southern societies. What is presented as a non-judgmental concern to establish civilised standards is, in effect, an iron with which to brand the impoverished parents of the South as child abusers. Any deviation from the Western model of the child and childhood invites immediate suspicion and condemnation. UNICEF's approach is typical of the trend for treating the exploitation of child labour, not as an issue of social and economic deprivation, but as a matter of immoral behaviour by Asians The Africans. and UNICEF report, State of the World's Children 1997, july/August 1997 L4I02 begins by stating that 'hazardous child labour is a betrayal of every child's rights as a human being and is an offence against our civilisation'. The report then seeks to disprove the 'myth' that 'child labour will never be eliminated until poverty disappears'. For UNICEF, 'hazardous child labour can and must be eliminated independently of poverty reduction'. This begs the question: if child labour can be eliminated independently of poverty reduction, then 'betrayal of every child's rights as a human being'that poverty. In other words, in the market world according to UNICEF, it seems that child labour, despite all appearances, is not an unavoidable product of the structural international market economy. So why do children get sent to work? The only other possible explanation is that Southern governments and wicked choices about their children.

market from the picture, UNICEF and its co-thinkers inevitably end up focusing upon the behaviour of individuals in the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable societies on Earth. The result is an abusive intrusion into Southern societies, through which governments and famimpelled ilies are to alter their behavparents in priorities iour and (non-judgementally of course) with for the regard problems they face. establishing By notion of a universal childhood unrelated to the realities of West. become judged. surely child labour-the —must be extraneous to condemn inequalities the in parents make By removing the power of the world no real the life in many parts of the world, the Western concern over child labour establishes a moral framework and hierarchy which infantilises the entire South, treating all of these societies like children in need of correction. The relationship between the West and the South is represented in the same terms as the adult-child relations in the The Western-child model symbolises what is natural and good. child The Southern and hazardous child labour violates this image and becomes the object of parental intervention by the West, either in the form of aid as nurture, or in the form of condemnation and punishment of moral Southern peoples. The fiction of the universal child becomes another means for reinforcing the West's international dominance, setting up values which standards of natural the decency against which the South will be Calling upon Western governments and multinational corporations to do something' to end the evils of hazardous child labour is at best naive, at worst irresponsible. The corporate executives and government officials whose policies have impoverished Southern societies have no interest in protecting Asian or African children, other than insofar as they can use the issue of child labour to barbaric South and the thereby strengthen the authority of Western agencies around the world.

And if we hand them the moral authority to dictate how children should live and be brought up over there, why should they not feel free to tell us how to civilise our children over here? On the same day in May that Christian Aid's child labour report was published, New Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw announced his contribution to the future of child welfare in this country.

Straw's plans included measures to incarcerate more young offenders, to make mischildren do creant forced labour for the community, to impose curfews and to introduce compulsory re-education for those parents who fall short of the govern- It is time to expose the charade of the crusade against child labour for what it is, even though to criticise it is to call down a torrent of condemnation upon your head. For those of us who are genuinely concerned about child labour and the conditions which give rise to it, it is out to today's feminised-consensus-seeking-non-adversarial politicians, charities and aid agencies, that the ending of child labour in Victorian England came about not through humanitarian interventions by Church or State, but through the political struggles of mainly male workers demanding living wages to protect them and their families from the curse of child slavery capitalist society imposed Norman Lewis will be convening the Children and the Politics of International Relations course at The Next Step - (see p15)

the next step http:// next step is an event for all

A CONFERENCE TO DISCUSS WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

those who want to see humanity move forward into the twenty first will bring together in the pages of LM over the past year and developed in The Point is to Change It. achieving a world fit for people, the magazine has consistently disputed the at the next st conference provides an exciting package for anybody wanting to will be a day of which seek - powerful notion that making our own and what can be On SUNDAY. from Africa to the media. our times, from to theories of On TUESDAY. 0171) 278 www.informinc.co we live in age of limited resources, ideas and possibilities, where which are beyond our control, rather than subjects capable of Friday 25 July to Tuesday 29 July 1997 the University of London Union & the Institute of Education - happening todaydone about it. a groups of specialists will lead courses exploring specific issues and debates. MONDAY will be filled with courses tackling important political trends of international relations post-material society the course Theory in - history. In contrast. subjectivity. an age of uncertainty will bring together key issues raised in the previous days. and draw some conclusions about where humanity goes from here. With films and entertainments included. the next step is an event not to be missed 9908 Ш Z Ш Ш

Saturday 26 July Sunday The uncertainty of life affects everybody today. From the top to the bottom of society, all of the old institutions and ideologies seem to have been called into question and discredited. Things which were once seen as potential solutions to the world's problems-scientific progress, social reform—are now seen as part of the problem. The consensus is that we are beset on all sides by new risks and dangers which require us to live under a cloud of caution, restraining our passions Monday and aspirations and trusting nobody.

What can we do about this unprecedented state of affairs? On Saturday, two plenary sessions will bring together everybody at the conference to examine the apparent crisis of humanity and suggest a new response: an attempt to pull the views of society into line with the real potential for improvement that does exist today. These sessions will be followed by a series of workshops which examine the effects of the new mood on specific issues, from counselling and addiction to the Holocaust Tuesday and the obsession with sleaze, and discuss how to set about changing the climate of debate.

• Ireland and the Irish • The new demography • History and identity • Freedom in cyberspace Women in the South: Lthe myth of empowerment Curriculum matters Rwanda: the great _genocide debate Childhood and friendship Lin a fearful world urban.futures The legalisation of Leveryday life The citizen state: civil society and the community Defending 'masculine" values MEDIAting reality [ Idealism, materialism and Darwinism The economy after _economics Belief and modernity: the sense Lof mission in an anxious age Children and the politics of international relations Decadent capitalism and the Lpost-material economy The health debate: questioning the assumptions The end of the Third World SCAM for the future [Theory in an age of _uncertainty Plus • The new democratic order these projects are really empowering.

the questions that current education theory avoids.

measures to protect children?

side of an urban future. from the law. derided are worth standing by.

how its influence can be challenged.

values and personal relationships?

to be flourishing. international affairs. decadence and stagnation?

for all those interested in SCAM's plans for 1997/8.

The status of women in the South is a central concern of overseas development projects today. This course asks who In all the furore over league tables and standards, who discusses the content of education today? This course asks For the last three years, images of bloodshed in Rwanda and Zaire have shocked the world. This course challenges the consensus that ethnic tensions and 'atavistic tribalism are responsible for Africa's problems.

Modern society seems obsessed with the dangers facing children. Why? What are the consequences of more At a time when everybody from Prince Charles to Swampy rails against the city, this course presents the positive As more aspects of life become subject to increasing legal regulation, the course team will put the case for freedom Promoting citizenship is now government policy. But is being a 'good citizen something we should aspire to?

Ambition, acquisitiveness, aggression—this course will argue that some of the masculine values that are so often This course looks at how the media affects the way we understand the world, how it defines the political agenda and This course will examine the convergence of natural and social theory in the study of humanity.

How true is the notion that we live in a post-industrial age in which making things is less important than moral As we approach the millennium, Belief and modernity examines the reasons why superstition and mysticism appear This course examines how and why the question of children's rights has gained an unprecedented status in Does Britain's post-materialist economy make it the coolest place on Earth, or is it merely an expression of he need for more counselling, more rationing and more ethics committees are just some of th issumptions that will be questioned in The health debat As the reorganisation of relations between North and South continues, this course will provide some new ways to challenge the continuing subordination of much of the globe.

SCAM, the Schools Campaign Against Militarism, is a dynamic youth organisation run by school students. This day is Does the fact that we live in an era of rapid change make it impossible to understand the world in which we live?

This challenging course will offer a new approach to making sense of society today.

Please make cheques payable to: Ulysses Consultancies Ltd and return with a completed booking form, to BM Ulysses, London WIN 3XX.

It is not essential to book courses in advance, but it is helpful if you could indicate preferences:

COST:

Before 24 July On the door Day tickets (in advance) Day tickets (on the door)

BOOKING FORM

Name: .. Address: Telephone: Sunday course: School & FE students E20 E25

EID

EIS

For more information about the conference contact Tiffany Jenkins on (017l) 278 9908.

Ticket type: full • day • Price paid: £ Creche places required? yes O no O Students & unwaged E50 E70 E15 E20 Ages: Monday course: Waged E80 E100 €25

CHILDCARE:

E35 .. E-mail: ccommodation offered? yes O no l commodation required? yes a no i

ACCOMMODATION ARRANGEMENTS:

If you book in advance, we can arrange for you to stay with other people attending the conference (please bring a sleeping bag) or you can stay in student halls for f28 a night.

A creche is also available, but places are limited and must be booked in advance.

.Postcode: Tuesday course:

How late is too late for abortion?

OPINION

ANN BRADLEY

For two months the American senate has been involved in the most perverse discussion about abortion. What started as an attempt to challenge the legality of a particular method of late abortion has developed into a discussion about whether late abortion should be permitted at all. The emerging consensus seems to be that 'post-viability' abortions are indefensible. Well, perhaps we should think about 'post-viability' abortions-the ones that take place at the stage of pregnancy when babies can be born alive and have a chance of surviving. We have all heard the apocryphal stories of the hospital where one doctor is aborting a 24-weekold fetus while down the corridor another doctor is fighting to save the life of a 24-week 'preemie'. Late abortions are, in the abstract, abhorrent, but of course they never happen in the abstract. Behind every abortion is the story of why this particular pregnancy must end in this way.

But those who are anti-abortion selfconsciously avoid the 'whys' and concentrate only on what happens, how it hap pens and what it does to the fetus. They know they have a compelling recruitment tool in pictures of aborted late-gestation fetuses. Those where the pregnancy has been ended by a medical induction look like tiny sleeping babies. After 'destructive' dilatation and evacuation abortions, fetuses look like the dismembered victims of a massacre. People who argue that the discarded human tissue from any operation looks disgusting and that that resulting from abortion is no different are woefully out of touch with normal sentiments. Abortion is not like any other operation. It ends a potential human life and for this reason most people find it significantly more distressing than anything else that happens in a hospital theatre.

It would be ridiculous for those of us who support the right to abortion not to recognise that anxiety about late proce dures is inevitable and understandable.

Even women who are determined to end their pregnancies usually find that their attitude to the pregnancy changes as it develops. Lynn Kelly -the woman whose husband recently dragged her through the courts to prevent her from having an abortion - is not untypical in her confession that she could not have gone through with the abortion, if she had had to undergo a medical induction and be delivered of a dead fetus. The gynaecologists I have asked say that the reason there are relatively few late abortions is not because women are refused such operations, but because few requests are made. It is worth remembering that by the time a woman's pregnancy reaches 20 weeks she is visibly (and therefore publicly) pregnant and she is probably feeling pretty robust fetal movements.

The abortion procedure at this stage usually involves an induced labour similar to that which the woman would have experienced at term - the difference being that prior to the induction a doctor will have passed a needle through her abdomen to inject a poison into the fetal heart so as to make sure there is no live birth.

Last month the Office of National Statistics released the 1995 abortion statistics for England and Wales. I found them particularly interesting given the current US discussion because for the first time they break down the exact circumstances of post 24-week (postviabilitv) abortions and the exact week of gestation in which the pregnancy was terminated. All were carried out on grounds of fetal abnormality-abortions for other reasons are not permitted after 24 weeks in the UK (except to save the life of the woman).

The range of abnormalities reads like the litany of human misery it is. Twenty-eight late abortions involved fetuses affected by severe brain malformations, 19 had chromosomal abnormalities such as Down's syndrome. The rest had malformations of the skeleton, urinary system, heart and lungs, blood disorders or a congenital infectious disease. Those readers who are concerned about the much-discussed late abortions for cleft palate will be comforted to know that none were carried out for malformations of the lip and palate; nor were there any for malformations of the eye, ear, face or neck. No evidence of late abortions for trivial, cosmetic reasons then. Those who wish to restrict late abortions need to decide which of these 76 should have been denied the women abortion that she, the potential child's mother, believed was the best end to the pregnancy. Should the women carrying the fetuses affected by Down's have been told that their reason was not good enough, that they must give birth to a child they feel they cannot bear?

I admit I balked on seeing the lateness of the gestation at which some of these pregnancies were terminated: six at 35 weeks or later. The one that really jolted me was the abortion at 38 weeks. Still I wonder about that woman, who she was, why? Perhaps the reason why it made such a big impression was because my own baby was born at 38 weeks-just two weeks before he was due and not even early enough to be called 'premature'. But there are two ways you can respond to this, and perhaps which way you jump depends on how you view women. Either you see this woman as somebody who needed to be constrained by law and forced to complete the rest of her preg nancy-or alternatively you can wonder at the awfulness of the situation that made her, undoubtedly with the approval of her doctors, decide that it was better that the pregnancy ended without a live birth, even so close to term. In which case you might conclude that she must have been the most desperate woman in the world. An American feminist once said that a woman does not want an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to chew off its leg to be free of the trap. This is never more true than of late abortion for fetal abnormality. Legislators should stay out of these women's faces: their decisions are hard enough.

20 HONG KONG GOES HOME

Ignore the British breast-beating about the handover of sovereignty, says Sheila Parker; Hong Kong is already part of China, and generally happy to be so

WHO'S AFRAID

OF THE RED DRAGON?

e are happy about 1 July.

We are Chinese and to be reunited with the mainland will be a great day for us.'

Mr and Mrs Li, a typical middle Hong Kong' family, told me this while we were watching the Chinese New Year fireworks on the waterfront on Hong Kong Island. Amazing as the fireworks were, I was even more amazed by their words. Coming from Britain I was expecting a doom-laden cloud to be hanging over Hong Kong and its people. Yet when I talked to Hong Kong Chinese people among the hundreds of thousands on the waterfront that night and later around Hong Kong and Kowloon, none of them said they were actually opposed to the handover from British to Chinese rule on 30 June.

Although I was still somewhat sceptical about this months later (perhaps they were all afraid to speak out?), the impression I gained on my trip was confirmed by a survey in the Far Eastern Economic Review (15 May 1996), revealing that 62 per cent of Hong Kong people would vote for China if given a choice about the future. China itself has been counting down the days to the handover with glee, on a huge clock in Tiananmen Square. Back in Britain, meanwhile, the discussion about Hong Kong's future is very different. Hong Kong's return to China at midnight on 30 June has been the subject of many introspective television news reports and newspaper articles, all predicting the worst. The Independent, for example, started printing the Lily Wong cartoons that used to appear in the South China Morning Post, in anticipation of a clampdown on a free press. There are fears that skilled people will leave the ex-colony and take their money with them. Many commentators voice concerns about the lack of human rights in China and the repression exemplified by the Tiananmen Square massacre of ARCHIVE 1989, and fear that Hong Kong will go the same way. The new Hong Kong government-in-waiting has made no secret of its plans to reverse some of the Liroz July/ August © 1997

2! recent liberalisation regarding the right to assembly introduced by Governor Chris Patten. The media has jumped upon this as a sign that Hong Kong will be turned into a police state under Beijing rule. The handover, or rather handback, of Hong Kong crystallises the different ways in which Britain and China see themselves and their future. The British authorities view the end of their rule in Hong Kong with ambiguity and a degree of anxiety. On the one hand, the international focus on the Crown colony of Hong Kong serves as an embarrassing reminder of Britain's colonial record, and its racial degradation of the Chinese in the last century. A senior British official who has been directly involved with the negotiations recently referred openly to Britain's humiliation of China through the Opium Wars which culminated in the 'Unequal Treaties'.

Many within the British establishment will be grateful that they can now absolve themselves of past sins.

However, at the same time, there is a sense of loss and nostalgia about Britain's imperial past. Midnight on 30 June will be a stark reminder to the world that Britain is not what it used to be and never will be again. In laying to rest the ghosts of Empire, the British establishment has to admit that its future is uncertain. The British government ministers and generals who subjugated China had an absolute sense of their power and their mission to "civilise' the world with the cannon and the Bible. Their successors today are impotent figures, standing on the sidelines and pleading with America to monitor human rights in Hong Kong.

Even a Foreign Office official working in the British administration in Hong Kong had to admit to me that they could do nothing should China choose not to honour the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984. Britain has lost its grip, and is having a hard time coming to terms with it-made harder still by the obvious relish with which the Chinese regime has humbled its old masters at every turn. The nostalgia for past certainties is behind all of the discussion in Britain about the threat to democracy and human rights in Hong Kong after the handover. Having lost their political power in Asia, the British authorities are attempting to reassert their moral authority over the East. The message is that we are still one of the few civilised and democratic nations on Earth, while the Chinese barbarians remain a 'yellow peril' that will destroy liberty and freedom in Hong Kong. Whatever happens in the future, 'It wasn't our fault' will be the cry from Whitehall, where the different factions are already trying to pin the blame on somebody else and wash their hands of responsibility for anything.

To listen to some of them talk, you would think that Britain had run Hong Kong as a model citizens' republic. In fact Hong Kong has been run under direct British rule as a Crown colony— and often run with a rod of iron. It was the place where the British authorities first introduced baton rounds to control public protests, and where thousands of Vietnamese boat people who fled to Hong Kong in search of Western-style freedom have spent years under armed guard, caged in camps, awaiting deportation. Britain only began liberalising its regime in Hong Kong in the run-up to the handover, as a cynical exercise in displaying the superiority of the British system. Governor Patten's reforms introduced the first direct elections to a Legislative Council (Legco) in September 1995. Although this has been heralded as democratic reform, the Legco is not the ruling body. Hong Kong has been run by the Executive Council (Exco) headed by the Governor. All members of the Exco are appointed, not elected. Were the British genuinely so concerned about human rights and democracy then they would surely have left some real democratic institutions behind, rather than this pathetic last minute botch-job. All Britain is doing is displacing its own responsibility for keeping democracy and freedom out of Hong Kong onto the Chinese. Any future problems due to the lack of democracy, which will undoubtedly be blamed on the Chinese, will in fact be the legacy of British rule.

While the British have tried to play down the real significance of the loss of Hong Kong, China has declared the handover to be an important political milestone. It is the pay-back for the way in which British imperialists humiliated the Chinese in the past. But there is more to it than that for China. If the handover goes smoothly, Beijing sees reunification with Taiwan as the ultimate prize. A smooth transition will place immense pressure on Taiwan to negotiate eventual reunification. More broadly, replacing the Union Jack with the red Chinese flag before the eyes of the world symbolises China's emergence as a modern power on the world stage—just as it signals Britain's withdrawal into the wings.

The handover of Hong Kong does present China with some challenges, too. The free market may be all the rage in China, but talk to any businessman and they will confirm that it is still difficult to do business there. Contrary to popular belief this is not because of too much red tape, but often because there are no regulations.

For example, the lack of any adequate contract law makes doing deals •

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE RED DRAGON?

ARROGA

eli st forei

BES

4 extremely hazardous. A new and formalised set of institutions and laws on the mainland will be necessary if Hong Kong is truly to be integrated into China.

The Chinese bureaucracy is also as concerned as the Hong Kong business elite that mainland corruption will spread to Hong Kong. What Beijing wants is to emulate Hong Kong's prosperity elsewhere in China, not to destroy it.

But even with these difficulties, the transition will go ahead, because Hong Kong has in practice been part of China for years. The events of 30 June/1 July are a formality only. Hong Kong's population is 98 per cent Chinese. Many have family connections in mainland China. Business links are also well established; Hong Kong capitalists did much to create the conditions in which a market economy could mushroom in the neighbouring Chinese province of Guangdong. As early as 1993, 80 per cent of local manufacturing firms in Hong Kong had transferred some or all of their production to mainland China; about 60 000 Hong Kong people were managing factories or other investments in China, while as many as four million

LMI02

july/August a jag not song people workers in southern China were directly or indirectly employed by Hong Kong firms. In the other direction, China has been a net lender to Hong Kong since 1982. Hong Kong and China are already joined at the hip. The view from Hong Kong itself of the handback, as illustrated by Mr and Mrs Li, has largely been squeezed out of the public debate in Britain. The only opinions heard from Hong Kong are those of dissidents who have every reason to fear Chinese rule, or the minority of stateless individuals who by now should have been issued with British passports. The voices of the majority of ordinary Hong Kong working people have not been reported.

Among them there is a widespread mood of indifference- -'A new government? So what? Life is hard and will carry on being hard'. But at the same time there is an air of optimism about the return to their increasingly powerful Chinese homeland. The British press may not like to report it, but the fact is that the majority of Hong Kong people do not like the British.

They see them as arrogant, elitist foreigners. They may not be warmly embracing the Beijing bureaucracy, but they certainly will not shed a tear when the British finally leave.

Nor are the Hong Kong Chinese elites worried about a Chinese threat to democracy. Indeed those who have run Hong Kong under British supervision tend to be the most anti-democratic of the lot. 'Why do we need democracy?'

asks a senior Hong Kong civil servant schooled in the imperial tradition of contempt for the masses: 'We provide some of the best housing and services to the people without their participation.

We do not need to be accountable to them. Why do they insist on making us accountable?' This particular civil servant's real fear was that, after the handover, millions more Chinese people would get into Hong Kong and place the government under intense pressure, undermining the idyllic social relations of colonial Hong Kong.

The newly emerging elites in the East are every bit as authoritarian minded as their Western predecessors. They might not use the same racially-loaded language when they talk about the Chinese masses, but their message is similar. Providing for the natives, rather than giving them any say in running their own affairs, is an approach which unites Western governments and corporations with Hong Kong officials and every ruling bureaucrat in China.

All the panics about the unfree future of Hong Kong are no more than British bombast, empty attempts to cover up the fact that Britain's anti-democratic record in Hong Kong, is, if anything, something the Chinese government would love to emulate. Hong Kong is probably the best example of how the market has thrived in the East, not in spite of, but because of the absence of liberal democracy. Hong Kong's future will be affected far more by what China achieves within the international economy than by what the Chinese bureaucracy does within Hong Kong itself. As they accelerate their drive to become a major economic power, the Chinese have every interest in maintaining Hong Kong's prosperity.

New China's ambition is to become more like the red-clawed capitalism of Hong Kong rather than trying to make Hong Kong become more like the old, red-in-name, Stalinist China.

TEENAGE DRINKERS SCARE

Alcopops? Chill out, says Jennie Bristow

POPPING MAD

o see how far a panic can go in a week, you have to look no further than a bottle of Hooper's Hooch. On Sunday ı1 May, a Sunday Times undercover investigation 'revealed' that alcopops sales executives were targeting underage drinkers. On Monday 12 May, a report published by Health Promotion Wales blamed alcopops for a rise in the number of underage drinkers. On Thursday 15 May, Channel Four broadcast Health Alert: 'Mine's an alcopop', which claimed that a rising number of young people are suffering from alcohol poisoning and pinned much of the blame on alcopops. That same evening, a judge at Bolton Crown Court blamed alcopops for causing a 14-year-old boy to burn down a local school, even though he had been drinking cider as well. On Friday 16 May, the Sun published a survey of 700 teenagers, claimed that kids as young as 10 are hooked on alcopops, and called for stricter regulation. Later that day New Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw ordered an urgent investigation into alcopops and hinted at a ban.

How could a bottle of sickly-sweet alcoholic pop cause so much instant consternation? Over the past two years, the alcopop has been accused of a series of serious crimes. Because it is alcoholic pop it is simultaneously accused of being too alcoholic and masquerading as a soft drink. Because teenagers are the main drinkers of alcopops, it is accused of encouraging underage drinking.

Because drinking sometimes causes health problems, it is accused of making young people ill. And because drinking is seen to be linked to crime, the alcopop is said to be encouraging youth crime.

Taken together, these accusations build up a picture of young kids getting pissed on alcopops because they think it is lemonade, going out to mug an old lady and ending up in a casualty ward with liver failure. A frightening —if it were true. A closer look at picturesome evidence, however, suggests that the alcopop has been framed. Which leads me to suspect that there is something other than the content of alcopops being discussed here.

Look for example at the claim that alcopops appear too similar to soft drinks. Maybe if you are blind, illiterate or have no sense of smell they do. But apart from having the word 'alcoholic' and the percentage of alcohol by volume slapped across the front, they do not taste the same as soft drinks.

Kids claiming that they did not know that they were drinking alcohol are just updating the old excuse—'He spiked my drink with vodka mum. I had no idea, honest', used to avoid getting into trouble after a heavy night out. In fact, the only incentive to drink these disgusting concoctions is that they boast their percentage by volume on the label: as anybody who has ever been a teenager should know, you go for the cheapest and quickest way of consuming loads of alcohol, and if that is alcopops rather than the Pernod and Black I used to drink, so be it.

As 15-year-old alcopop fans Oona and Sophie told me, 'We wouldn't drink them if there was no alcohol in them, would we?' Okay. So what about Jack Straw's point that 'we all know the links between alcohol abuse and crime. Well, do we? As Home Office Press Officer Helen Stow admitted, you would be hard pushed to find statistics proving this link. She sent me a research document filled with a few local figures, a bit of sociology and lots of psychological notions about the kinds of people who have a predisposition to commit a crime on their way home from a pub: predominantly young white unemployed males, the usual suspects.

Meanwhile, the Home Office's own figures on juvenile convictions and cautions show a marked decline in recent years (from 272 000 in 1981 to 179 000 in 1995). It is doubtful whether the arrival of alcopops has reversed this trend-and even if they say it has, nobody in the Home Office has the figures to base that assumption on.

So what about health? According to the Office for National Statistics, a total of three people aged 19 and under died from alcohol in England and Wales in 1995. As a spokesperson for the Department of Health explained, 'you would have to drink excessive amounts for alcohol to have an immediate effect, and that's not what is happening.

Channel Four's Health Alert programme suggested that as many as 5000 under-16s may be admitted to hospital as a result of alcohol every year: broken down, this works out at less than 100 per week over the whole country. If you imagine how many young people are out on a Saturday night in any large town, and remember that stomach-pumping has always gone on for teenagers who have had a few too many, it is possible to put these figures into perspective. And what about the most irrefutable evidence of all-that alcopops have caused a rise in underage drinking? Not so irrefutable after all, it would seem.

The widely reported Health Promotion Wales research that caused so much publicity is, as PR and Media Manager Phil Hutchinson boasted, 'the first time people have ever been able to put figures on children liking alcopops'.

In fact the 'report' that caused the stink was actually a press release (I was told the full report would not be available for three weeks) headlined 'Alcopops fuel teen drinking rise', and sent out to coincide with the Channel Four documentary on alcopops and health, so it was hardly agenda free. And the findings of the report, even as publicised in the press release, seemed to indicate nothing more than a positive desire to link alcopops with underage drinking. The report showed that, among 15-16 year olds, 30 per cent of girls and 24 per cent of boys claim to drink alcopops, and 65 per cent of boys and 54 per cent of girls say they drink alcohol, at least weekly. As there is no indication of how much they drink, the fact that just

ALCOPOPS

4 over half of young people might have a tipple once a week does not seem particularly shocking. And yes, the figures have gone up. Ten years previously in 1986, well before the birth of alcopops, Health Promotion Wales' figures showed that 49 per cent of boys and 38 per cent of girls aged 15-16 claimed to drink alcohol weekly. But relying on teenagers' boasting is not generally considered to be a sound research method-especially when they are revelling in the shock value of breaking a fashionable new taboo. More importantly, even if it is taken as given that there has been a rise in underage drinking, the link between this and alcopops is, to say the least, tenuous.

The only thing the survey showed was that young people drink alcopops among other things. When you scour the press release to find out where the headline 'Alcopops fuel teen drinking rise' came from, the 'statistics' get even more confusing. 'A significant minority of 11-16 year olds who drink alcopops do not drink other forms of alcohol.

For example, 26 per cent of 15-16 year old girls drink alcopops only, suggesting that alcopop drinkers are not just those who already consume alcohol.' Now look at this again. There is a minority so 'significant' it is not even quantified.

The one figure provided proves nothing. If alcopops did not exist, those 15-16 year old girls would have been just as likely to drink some other alcoholic concoction as they would to stick to lemonade. They are the first generation to whom alcopops are available when you have your first drink. The only point made here is a tautology: alcopops exist, therefore people drink them, therefore people drink. This is a HOTOS: DAVE CHAPMAN far cry from saying that alcopops cause otherwise teetotal youngsters to start drinking alcohol. There is no case against the alcopop on any of the charges levelled. Then

ALC

4-7% VOL

JulytAugust e 1997

25 why will it be convicted and sent down by a unanimous jury verdict? The ingredients of an alcopop—alcohol and carbonated water-did not trigger the panic. The ingredients of the discussion around alcopops, however, make it suited to be a major moral panic of our times and a perfect target for New Labour's ban-happy lifestyle policemen.

Think about the potent cocktail of issues that has been brought together through the alcopops row.

A new alcoholic drink comes on the market—at a time of loud concern about 'lifestyle related illnesses' and public disorder. This new alcoholic drink is consumed by young peopleat a time when the papers are full of stories about 'the end of innocence' and children out of control. The alcopops industry is no small business—at a time when multi-million pound corporations are decidedly unfashionable, alcopops are worth an estimated £375m ('the fastest-growing alcoholic beverages in retail history'- -Sunday Times, 10 May 1997). At a time when it is presumed that people need only smoke one fag, consume one drink or take one tablet in order to be 'addicted', the idea that youth are being seduced into drinking fuels fears of life-long dependency.

And at a time when people are assumed to be gullible fools unduly affected by imagery, the colourful lettering on alcopops bottles acts as a red rag to a bull for the anti-advertising lobby.

Alcohol, crime, profit, health, addiction, advertising, children. When a bottle of spiked lemonade can become linked with so many concerns, the real extent of these links ceases to matter.

Like many suspects falsely accused of a crime, the alcopop is not the victim of a conspiracy: it was introduced in the wrong place at the wrong time, and happens to be the right 'type' to fit the frame. But the sentence facing on advertising and sales—illustrates the restrictive mood which grips society today. Portman Group is to increase the use of 'proof of age' cards, a 'national, free and voluntary scheme which is as official as a passport, and sounds like getting young people used to ID cards by the back door. Some regulation has already taken place. Last November Bass were forced to change a laughing fruit logo on Hooper's Hooch into a serious, 'adult' fruit. A couple of months later, the Portman Group demanded that 'generic soft drink words' like 'lemonade' and 'cola' were removed from the labels. In September 1996, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against an advert for the flavoured cider Diamond Zest because it showed people under the age of 25 engaged in 'antisocial and irresponsible behaviour' (sitting in shopping trolleys and laughing). seem inconsequential to those of us who are not underage drinkers, alcopops drinkers, advertisers, or alcopops executives. But the "ban alcopops' discussion is based on an assumption which should concern us all: that, in the name of 'looking after children', the whole of society should be treated like naughty adolescents. Nobody is allowed to see an advert if those on high decide it is too "irresponsible'.

Everybody is told to set an example to the voung through 'safe and responsible drinking. Anybody suggesting that the point of drinking is to escape from being 'safe and responsible' for a while and to have a good time is met with the icy stares of New Labour's multi-agencies, who preach the immorality of the habits we are teaching our children.

Rowena Marsden, 18, is undergoing counselling to reduce her drinking from 100 units per week. On Channel 4's alcopops documentary, she was quizzed as to why she rejects her counsellor's advice that she should give up completely. Shrugging her shoulders, she retorted T'd rather die enjoying myself, you know what I mean?'.

For the makers of Health Alert, Rowena was a typical example of the problem society is dealing with. For me, it was just a shame that the only person expressing any spirit of liberty had to be a sad near-alcoholic. When having a good time becomes a "bad habit', it is almost enough to make you want to hit the fizzy stuff

Dr Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Bosnian Serbs, has been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity by the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.

In an exclusive interview conducted in Republika Srpska, he gave Thomas Deichmann his side of the story. All opinions expressed are Dr Karadzic's personal views

"I ACCUSE'

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Dr Karadzic, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently announced that bringing you to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague is her 'top target' now. Do you think you will be arrested soon?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: I can't say anything about that because I don't know what they intend to do. Certainly I doubt that they want to see me in The Hague. They would have more trouble with me than I would have with them.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Albright also went to Belgrade.

What were her demands to Serbia's president Milosevic in regard to your arrest and that of General Miladic [also indicted for war crimes]? DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: She may have mentioned something, but Mr Milosevic is not in a position to deliver me or Mr Mladic. We are not citizens of Yuoslavia and delivering us would be against his constitution.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Why do you not recognise the DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: Because the Tribunal is not a juridical institution. It has been founded in illegal ways by an unauthorised body and on a discriminatory basis. Its aim is to prosecute my whole nation. It is particularly addressing the responsibility for the destruction of Yugoslavia to the Serb nation, and is drawing out terrible consequences for the Western politicians know that after the whole affair there will be many investigations by independent bodies. So the Tribunal aims to make the truth invisible forever. They want to put a big seal on their own deception and the lies. And this big seal is meant to be The Hague Tribunal.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: What do you mean when you say the Tribunal would fear you going there?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: They fear me because I am not going to defend myself. I am going to accuse. Even now I will not be silent any longer, because I am attacked throughout the world on the basis of completely wrong facts, on the basis of distorted truth. And it is not only an attack on me personally.

It is also against my family and my nation, my people. There are people who are talking about me who do not know anything about me. Many diplomats who are coming here, even small clerks of their own nations, they dare to say

PHOTO• MICHASWANER

LMI02 July/August • 1997

BOSNIA FIVE YEARS ON

terrible things about me and spit at me even though they know nothing. They talk in the most terrible colours as if I am a monster. I am not a monster. I am a writer, I am a good and respected psychiatrist and I am supported and beloved by my people. I have not done anything wrong.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: The Western media call you a DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: They are absolutely wrong.

We did not cause the war and we are not responsible for the war. During the war we have behaved strictly according to the international laws of war, to international standards according to the Geneva Convention. We have proofs for that. Nobody has shown any proofs for the opposite.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: But the Tribunal has so far listed 36 different counts against you: genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention of 1949, violations of the laws or customs of war. Are you suggesting that all the allegations are a fiction?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC; Absolutely. These allegations are completely fake. They don't have any truth. They produce only empty noise and empty accusations. They did not take into account what really happened here and the documents that we have submitted to anyone who wants to see them.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: What about the question of who was responsible for the outbreak of the Bosnian war? There is a consensus in the Western media that the Serbs, and in particular you, were the aggressors.

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: How could I possibly be an aggressor in my own country? This is just noise to hide what they themselves have done to this country.

We were one of three ruling parties in Bosnia Herzegovina.

We had 64 per cent of territory with a Serb majority. We had one third of the authority, I was in coalition with the Muslims and the Croat parties. We strongly opposed the secession of Bosnia Herzegovina. Finally, only under pressure from the European Union, we accepted the secession on one condition, that Bosnia Herzegovina becomes a confederation of three states. According to the Lisbon Conference on 18 March 1992 that had been accepted. That was three weeks before the war started. That was our only condition. And that was a horrible concession because the Serbs did lose their own mother state, Yugoslavia. We have done everything to avoid the war. But we could not do it because the Muslims and the Croats abandoned the Lisbon agreement. We can't be called the aggressors—not even in relation to Sarajevo. Four fifths of the territory of Sarajevo was Serbian.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Already at a very early stage of the war you had lost all sympathy in the West. Roy Gutman from Newsday and others published stories about concentration camps and death camps in July and August 1992. What was the truth about these camps?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: Concerning the camps stories: this is the most dreadful lie that happened, and turned the whole world against the Serbs. We did have a lot of prisoners of war in many areas. But they have not been killed. Our people had to keep them somewhere. I don't know what the conditions were but there were no civilians, women, children, elderly people in prisoner of war camps. I personally ordered the commanders to open the camps to the International Red Cross.

Concerning the most famous camps Tropolje and Omarska: I personally invited Penny Marshall and other journalists to come and see in August 1992. And they came and they did a terrible job—shameful for their profession and for Europe.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: But the IRC was only allowed to enter Omarska after the ITN visit.

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: The IRC had my general approval. That was an order without any limitations to get everywhere they wanted. The order was signed by me.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: At precisely the time that the camps stories blew up, in July 1992, you were in London at a conference. What was your impression from talking to journalists there about the camps?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: In London I got the impression that they really believed that there were such concentration camps. Therefore I decided to let them come and find out themselves. I thought they respected themselves and they respected their own profession. I invited them and I think even some of them came with the same THOMAS DEICHMANN: Were you surprised about how ITN finally presented their story in their news bulletins on 6 August 1992? DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: I was astonished. I could not believe such a prominent company framing something that terribly influenced the fate of my people. This is not simply a media story. Nobody can count how many Serbs died because of these pictures. Nobody can count how many bombs hit Serb targets and how many civilians have suffered and died because of this one misleading picture with the barbed wire.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Were you surprised by the international reaction their images provoked?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: No. Actually I had an understanding for the reaction. Because if it was the truth, THOMAS DEICHMANN: Do you dispute that people in Omarska and Keraterm were mistreated and killed?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: No. I can't exclude solitary cases of abuse on the basis of personal revenge. We had civil wars in the region for the last 500 years.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: The world media immediately talked about "The Proof for a new Holocaust in Bosnia. Did you later regret inviting Marshall and the other journalists?

It seems as if you completely misjudged the situation.

•Nobody can count how many

SERBS DIED

because of these pictures' DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: Yes. Sometimes I accuse myself for being so naive and so trustful towards such a big company like ITN. I should not have been. But our entire leadership realised that any attempt to hide the truth would be much worse than letting them see what they wanted.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Penny Marshall from ITN later said this whole trip to the camps was a 'PR mistake of the DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: That was not our mistake. We opened the country to people with a conscience. If they don't have a conscience that is their own mistake before their own audience and before my people who died because of their pictures. We are not skilful in PR. We did not want to make PR.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Was there any contact between you and Marshall after August 1992?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: No. I only send her messages through a contact that she should come out and tell the truth and clear her own conscience, and maybe come here and apologise to the people. She then would be a much more respected person than now when she is saying nothing.

I invite her again to say publicly that she was invited by us, that she saw Trnopolje and she found a piece of barbed wire which was not around Tropolje camp, but around a small •

28

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'The Serb side

HAS LOST AND

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most in this war' area protecting property. And that she made a picture that others named a concentration camp. She cannot now excuse herself by saying, she did not call Tropolje a concentration camp. The others did it on the basis of her own job. She should come out and say the truth no matter how painful it is.

This is the only way for an honest, proper person.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: But the British journalists were dissatisfied because you gave them the okay to see all the camps they wanted to, but then they were not allowed to see the whole of Omarska camp. Did you try to play a game with them which backfired on you?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: No I did not intend that. But now you can ask who was wrong: the local commander who did not allow them to see everything or me. My position is still not to hide anything. But on the terrain sometimes you have people who are stubborn and not so naive and trustful as I was.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: How do you feel when journalists compare you with German Nazis who were sentenced to death 50 years ago during the Nuremberg trials?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I feel sorry for them. How possibly can they say such things.

I have been defending my people only in a necessary measure.

We did not even take Sarajevo. We defended our territory according to the Lisbon Agreement. We did not overreact in any situation. THOMAS DEICHMANN: The result of the ITN reports was that the Serbs were seen as the new Nazis, running concentration camps, organising a new Holocaust in Bosnia.

How do you feel about these comparisons?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: There is absolutely nothing comparable. The Serb side has lost and suffered the most in this war. Why people believe such comparisons and make no effort to go further than the first impression-that is their own fault. Of course the consequences are paid by my people.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: Let us talk about some of the other cases used against you—the bread line massacre for example, when 14 civilians were killed in May 1992 in Sarajevo, which led to the UN embargo. The Western media blamed the Serbs.

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: It is quite obvious to anyone objective that Moslems have done it. There are evidences, there are reports of the UN, which got stuck in Washington.

Many people in Washington are responsible for hiding evidence. These reports say that the mine could not come from the Serb positions. Other evidence has shown that it was an explosive on the ground. If the UN people were free to talk, that would have been obvious immediately the same morning.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: You are also indicted for a sniping campaign in Sarajevo. That is fiction in your mind?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: Do you know how many Serbs were killed by snipers? The first sniping victim, a girl, was killed by a Muslim, Mr Juka Prazina. There is video evidence for that. I do not exclude the possibility that Serbs have responded, but I guarantee you that General Mllic would not allow any sniping, particularly against civilians.

July/August • 1997 And we have signed the anti-sniping agreement on 14 August 1994. Before that the Muslims have done many tricks to get moral sympathy in the world, particularly since some media were willing to buy that kind of stuff.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: In summer 1995 again a grenade killed many people in a market place in Sarajevo. This attack led to heavy Nato air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs, and the Western media demanded more. You again denied being responsible for the attack. But what is your evidence?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: Our own people did not fire at that time at that target. Just read what Lord Owen, Jossef Bodansky, US army Charles Boyd and UN General Andrej Demurenko said about that. I have asked for an international independent investigation. But I was rejected. I do not accept anything if it is not done by an impartial commission. That explosion was also staged. This is a very cheap story but of course you can only trust it if you have an interest to trust it.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: A couple of weeks before the Nato airstrikes—from 26 May to 2 June 1995—the Bosnian Serb army took 284 UN hostages as human shields. This is another part of the Tribunal's indictment against you. How do you justify this act? DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: There is a contradiction saying UN soldiers were hostages. According to international law only civilians can be hostages. UN soldiers had been involved in two ways in the bombardment of Serb positions. First their own commander asked for airstrikes. Second, they pointed with lasers on to the targets, guiding the strikes. They were neither civilians nor impartial. Our soldiers were entitled to help themselves with that desperate action.

THOMAS DEICHMANN: The Tribunal issued a separate indictment against you and General Ratko Mladic because of Srebrenica. When the Bosnian Serb army took over that safe area in July 1995 many people were killed. Last year mass graves were opened by UN investigators. The media talk about up to 8oo0 missing people.

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: How do we know that many people were killed? What did they discover in these graves?

Much less than the Serbs discovered in the same area. We have discovered 50 mass graves and UN General Morillon was present there. From 10 to 50 soldiers and civilians were in these graves, killed by Muslims from Srebrenica. We can show you names and dates. And Srebrenica was never a safe haven. This was admitted by Boutros Ghali several times. It was not demilitarised as it should have been. It was a Muslim stronghold with the aim to harass the Serbs. I know that many Muslim soldiers were killed in fighting. They fought in the forests in the following weeks; 9000 Muslim soldiers were based in Srebrenica. THOMAS DEICHMANN: How much were America and other Western countries involved in the development of the war?

DR RADOVAN KARADZIC: Many Western countries have been involved diplomatically or militarily. This is something unbelievable. The war is mathematics and we could not do better with such an enormous big power against us.

Look how they behave. [UN envoy] Mr Holbrooke admitted to CNN that according to the Dayton Agreement I was not supposed to leave my party position. But he made me leave it and he is proud of that. He is proud of doing something illegal. He is proud of saying look how powerful 1 am by doing something that is not in peace accord'. Can you imagine that kind of pride? That is why I will not be silent. I will not participate in political life in my country, but I will not be silent.

My whole people are very angry. Those [Nato] helicopters that are flying over my home make people very angry. That is why I am going to accuse them. I have the evidence for the responsibility of many governments. I would call some Lords to get out their correspondence, and I would call some Secretary Generals and former Secretary Generals to come out with their evidence. I would take their own books and show what they have done to this country. They don't have any right to accuse me.

Helen Searls cross-examines the International Tribunal's judgement against the Bosnian Serb militiaman whom it found guilty of 'crimes against humanity'.

TIME TO PUT THE WAR

CRIMES TRIBUNAL IN

29 Kangaroo court? Dusko Tadic (far right) consults with his lawyer through glass under the watchful eye of a UN jailer

BOSNIA FIVE YEARS ON

THE DOCK

he International Tribunal at The Hague decreed in May that the Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic was guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia. Pending an appeal, the judges are expected to sentence Tadic to life imprisonment later on this year.

Reaction to the verdict was mixed. Some, including the trial judges, saw it as a good day for human rights. Others have been more critical. On both sides of the Atlantic many complained the verdict was 'too little too late'. Within minutes of the verdict, Bosnia correspondent turned MP Martin Bell complained that only seven of the 74 people wanted for 'war crimes' in the former Yugoslavia are in custody. He urged Western governments to do more to bring the war criminals to justice.

Even the critics, however, agreed that the Tadic judgement was a 'historic landmark', the first judgement

PHOIU: PA

of an international war crimes tribunal since the Second World War. Inevitable comparisons were widely drawn with the famous military tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo. And as the world's first internationally convicted war criminal for 50 years, it was not long before Dusko Tadic was being discussed in the same breath as convicted Nazi war criminals, butchers like Herman Goering, Rudolph Hess or Klaus Barbie.

Nobody, it seemed, wanted to ask the obvious question thrown up by this case: why now? Why after 50 years is a UN body trying individuals for 'crimes against humanity' and 'violations of the laws and customs of war? You could be forgiven for assuming that it had something to do with the uniquely brutal character of the Bosnian war. The conflict was, after all, frequently described in terms reminiscent of Nazi brutality. A reasonable assumption maybe, but a wrong one. In ploughing through the weighty judgement from •

30 Civil war in Sarajevo doesn't make these Serbs Nazis 4 The Hague one thing is clear. While terrible things happened on all sides in Bosnia, there is simply no comparison between Dusko Tadic and the Nazi butchers tried at Nuremberg.

Before the civil war broke out in Bosnia, Tadic was a cafe owner who practised karate in his spare time. During the war he became a reserve policeman in the Serbian-held sector of Bosnia, manning checkpoints in the Prijedor region. Tadic was indicted for numerous gruesome offences said to have been committed during that time. He faced charges for gang rape, sexual mutilation, abuse of prisoners, persecution, beatings and murder. Throughout the trial the press made much of the charges against Tadic. Less widely publicised was the fact that the judges decided there was evidence to convict Tadic of only 11 of the total of 31 counts against him. What is more, all of the more serious specific charges of gang rape, sexual mutilation and murder were thrown out. In all he was found guilty of beating 14 Muslim men and of a 'crime against humanity' which is defined as 'persecution'. It is worth examining these charges a little more closely.

Tadic was convicted of involvement in violent beatings, and the court heard harrowing testimonies from men who suffered severe pain, fear and indignity. But however brutal such tales, when compared with the actions of the men who previously occupied the defendant's seat in a war crimes tribunal, Tadic's actions seem mundane and insignificant.

In fact when you consider the fact that the Prijedor region was in the midst of a fierce and bloody conflict, it is hard to believe that Tadic's actions were in any way exceptional.

Tadic was convicted of war crimes because he was found to have inflicted cruel treatment on individuals who were not at the time taking part in hostilities; in other words, he was found guilty of beating male prisoners. Is he really the first combatant to have done that in the middle of a war over the past 50 years? A candid chat with British soldiers involved in wars against the Argentinians, Iraqis or Irish, or with US troops who fought in Vietnam, Grenada or Panama would surely reveal the brutal treatment of prisoners to be far more commonplace than the Tadic judgement implies.

Even when one examines the broader charge of 'persecution', it is still impossible to equate the actions of July/August

HOTOS: MICHAEL WALTER

Dusko Tadic with those of convicted Nazi war criminals.

The Tribunal decided that the charge of persecution could be levelled against those who: 'commit inhumane acts during armed conflict as part of a widespread and systematic attack on a civilian population that is intended for discriminatory reasons to inflict severe damage on the victims' physical integrity and human dignity. For these purposes, discrimination is legally defined as differential treatment on the basis of religion, race or politics.

In legal-speak the crime sounds horrifying. But if we stop for a minute and examine what is actually being said it should become clear that there is a fundamental flaw in this definition. For a start it is quite wrong to equate discrimination on the basis of race and religion with differential treatment on the basis of politics. Fighting somebody with different political beliefs is not the same as racism. Every political party in the world is organised on the basis that you treat your political friends differently from your political foes. Political difference is also the basis for most wars. The end result of equating political discrimination with racial discrimination is evident in the Tribunal's findings.

The political struggle between different nationalist factions in Bosnia is redefined as an outburst of ethnic hatred between people of different religions, a race war that can be widely talked about in the same breath as the Nazi genocide against the Jews. The conflict in Bosnia is removed from any political context, and the reasons behind the war are lost.

The ruling on persecution is particularly problematic when applied to a situation like the Bosnian conflict which, the Tribunal had to agree, was a civil war. It is in the nature of a civil war that one section of society goes to war with another, and in that sense 'discriminates' against those who have a different idea of how and by whom the country should be run. What is more, in a civil war the distinction between civilians and combatants is always unclear. By definition the conflict takes on a civil character. In the light of this, it is difficult to see how anybody could take part in a civil war without being guilty of the crime against humanity defined as persecution by the International Tribunal.

BOSNIA FIVE YEARS ON

31 There was nothing about the that merited its

CONSTANT

COMPARISON

to the Nazi Holocaust area'. The trial chamber therefore assumed that he had knowledge of and supported the plan for a Republika Srspka (a separate Serb state).

UN Security Council disapproved that turned his pretty by being a member of the SDS.

By labelling Tadic as guilty of 'persecution', the International Tribunal explicitly drew a parallel between Tadic on the other hand was probably just a slap happy such as Barbie. The scale of suffering inflicted is

BOSNIAN WAR

The case against Tadic is a case in point. The trial chamber deduced that Tadic was guilty of this crime against humanity, not because of specific things he had done, but because of the politics that inspired his actions. Tadic was, in his own words, a 'trusted SDS member' (the Serbian nationalist party) who had been 'asked to run a crucial plebiscite in the Kozarac to the Nazi Holocaust. From these facts the trial chamber deduced that Tadic acted in a discriminatory fashion. His actions were specifically directed against the Muslim population in the region and inspired by his political belief in Serbian nationalism. In the eyes of the Tribunal such action constitutes the 'crime against humanity' of persecution. In other eyes, however, Tadic might look more like a fairly typical militiaman in the middle of any It is clearly not the actual scale of the violence which decides whether or not an act is considered to be a 'crime against humanity' by the UN and its Tribunal. Rather, the motive behind the act is all-important. In the case of Tadic it was his membership of a nationalist party of which the unexceptional actions into a crime against humanity. In this ideological construction, the crime is defined not as an action, but as an idea. In short Tadic committed a thought crime Tadic's actions and those of the notorious Butcher of Lyons' Nazi Klaus Barbie-convicted in a French court in 1987 for his role in the organisation of the deaths of 77 000 French Jews, who were murdered or deported to death camps. Yet there is no sensible comparison between the two. Barbie was found guilty of persecuting Jews in occupied France because he was involved in the systematic annihilation of a race of people.

militiaman. He may not have shown much sympathy for his Muslim victims, but his actions can hardly be judged in the same light as even a local organiser of the Nazi "final solution' incomparable. And unlike the Jews in Nazi Germany or in occupied France, Tadic's victims-Bosnian Muslims—were in armed conflict with the Bosnian Serbs.

The more one examines the Tadic trial, the more clear it becomes that there was nothing about his actions which merited comparison with the records of the convicted war criminals of the past, because there was nothing about the Bosnian war that merited its constant comparison Which brings us back to our question: why did the UN Security Council choose this moment and this conflict, after 50 years, to set up a war crimes tribunal? To answer this it is necessary to look way beyond Bosnia. The International Tribunal only makes sense if it is seen as a product of the West's search for a righteous role in the post-Cold War world, rather than of any search for truth and justice If the Tribunal was simply concerned with justice then the UN would surely have paid more attention to its own legal procedures to ensure that justice was done. For a start, somebody could have seriously asked whether such an international tribunal has any legal basis on which to intervene around the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Under its own rules the UN cannot just walk into civil conflicts within its member states and lay down the law.

The principle of non-intervention is still written into international law. During the Bosnian war, the UN Security Council justified setting up its Tribunal on the bogus basis that this was not a civil war, but an international conflict. But when The Hague judges came to examine the circumstances of the war they ruled, by a majority decision, that this assessment of the war was wrong. Under the rules of international law this was not an international conflict after all. It was a civil conflict within a nation state. The rules of the Geneva Convention do not apply in such situations, and there is no legal basis for outside intervention.

Not only are there questions to be answered about the legality of the Tribunal, there are also problems relating to the procedures used throughout the trial.

Many things were permitted in the Tribunal that •

BOSNIA FIVE YEARS ON

32 There was no jury;

THE RULES OF

EVIDENCE

WERE FLIMSY;

heresay evidence and

ANONYMOUS

WITNESSES

would never have been allowed in a court concerned Tadic had no jury to judge him. The trial judges appointed by the UN performed this function. The rules guiding the permissibility of evidence were flimsy. Things that fly in the face of natural justice, like hearsay evidence and anonymous witnesses, were permitted throughout the trial. Where is the justice if the accused cannot even face his accusers? Moreover, but for the investigative skills of the defence team, a trained liar—Witness 'L' (otherwise known as Dragan Opacic) —would have been accepted as a credible prosecution witness by the court.

As Thomas Deichmann explained in the article "The Picture that Fooled the World', in February's LM magazine, Opacic finally admitted that the police in Sarajevo had schooled him for the witness box, but only when the defence team presented him with his father whom Opacic had claimed to be dead. Opacic originally told the Tribunal stories of gang rape, torture and murder at Tropolje camp. Most famously, he drew a map of Tropolje depicting a barbed wire fence surrounding the camp. Despite the lack of any corroborative evidence, Tadic's judges took in all of Opacic's fantastic tales.

Even after the defence team exposed them as a pack of lies, the judges' statement finding Tadic guilty merely noted that a witness' evidence had been 'withdrawn'.

The actual guilt or innocence of Tadic was not the real issue in this farce of a trial. The larger significance of the Tribunal is that its very existence defines the way that the world sees a conflict like the Bosnian war. The war in Bosnia was prolonged and violent because Western governments interfered in the conflict; indeed the American-led recognition of the breakaway republic of Bosnia lit the touch-paper for the war to explode in the first place. Without the interference and backing of the West, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia may well have gone the way of other disputes in Eastern Europe.

The International War Crimes Tribunal turns the truth about Bosnia on its head. Through this court, acting on behalf of the Western-run UN Security Council, the West ceases to be the guilty party and becomes the judge and jury, passing sentence on the Serbs, Croats and Muslims and decreeing what is right and what is wrong in Bosnia. The Western nations behind the Tribunal can stand above it all as though the conflict had nothing to do with them. They are not just distanced from the horrors of the war, they are now recast in the role of righteous arbitrators about what took place there.

The war is now the fault of evil militiamen driven by inexplicable ethnic hatreds.

The idea that somebody like Tadic is a war criminal lends legitimacy to the division between the civilised West and the rest. The implication of singling out certain acts as war "crimes' is that there is somehow a civilised, non-criminal way of conducting warfare that 'we' in the West abide by. But where do you draw the line? What defines criminal behaviour in a war zone? The Tadic trial indicates that the criminals are simply the ones of whom the Western authorities disapprove.

The Tadic trial is important because it seals in legal history the recasting of the Bosnian war as a battle of good against evil. It lends weight to those who would have us believe that wars are fought between demons and saints. Most dangerously it bolsters the view that the Western states the representatives of civilisation in this fairy talea moral obligation to get involved and impose peace on the warring tribes 'over there'. As Martin Bell's call for greater intervention to round up more criminals indicates, the end result of the exercise is to legitimise more Western interference across the globe, so strengthening the domination of a handful of great powers over the rest of the world. The West can effectively build new empires of influence, under the guise of standing up for good against evil.

The portrayal of a war like the Bosnian contest in such simplistic terms is, however, dishonest and dangerous. It is dishonest because it is based on the misrepresentation of complex historical events. And it is dangerous because it strengthens the hand of the very forces that stirred up the conflict in the first place. In this respect the Tadic trial underlines the importance of LM's own battle against ITN. By challenging the ITN 'Picture that Fooled the World' -an image of Trnopolje camp which did so much to demonise one side of the conflict as evil—LM is not simply putting the record straight. Rather we are demonstrating that the real facts of the Bosnian war often jar with the cosy, fairy-tale version of events.•

Five years ago, ITN's images of emaciated men behind barbed wire convinced the world that the Serbs were running Nazi-style concentration camps in Bosnia.

As ITN pleads innocent to the charge of inciting the media riot that followed, Thomas Deichmann reviews the evidence in those August 1992 bulletins

BOSNIA FIVE YEARS ON

33

BOSNIE

THE CAMPS:

GLIMPSE INTO

BENOLIDE?

ITN ON TRIAL

TN has made two official responses to my article "The Picture that Fooled the World' (LM, February 1997), which posed some embarrassing questions about their award-winning reports from Bosnian camps. One was a libel writ against the magazine. The other was a statement that ITN 'stands by its reporting of the finding of the detention camps, which were not referred to as "Nazi-style concentration camps'" (23 January 1997). This raises an interesting question. If ITN did not call the Serb-run camps at Trnopolje and Omarska in northern Bosnia concentration camps, where did the whole world get the idea that they were?

Why was everybody convinced that the ITN team led by Penny Marshall and Ian Williams had found the 'proof of a new Holocaust in August 1992? Did high-ranking politicians, newspaper editors and millions of television viewers suffer a collective hallucination while watching the ITN reports?

To answer the question I went back and reviewed ITN's news bulletins from the key days of 6 and 7 August 1992. In one sense, ITN is right: they did not call the camps Nazi-style concentration camps. But I have made that clear all along. My accusation against ITN is, first, that the way the pictures were produced and presented gave the misleading impression that Tropolje was a concentration camp. And second, that when the world media broadcast that bogus interpretation, ITN not only failed to correct it, but celebrated it. Five years on, a close look at the evidence suggests ITN is guilty on both counts.

The two key bulletins which broke the world-exclusive story of the camps were the Channel 4 News at 7pm on 6 August (the day after the pictures were taken), and the News at Ten on ITV that same evening. The keynote image with which both programmes began, and which was repeated throughout, was the picture of the emaciated Fikret Alic apparently caged behind barbed wire at Tropolje camp.

This image had the most tremendous impact on world opinion, immediately inviting comparisons to the pictures of Nazi concentration camps like Dachau, Bergen Belsen or Auschwitz where starving Jewish prisoners behind huge barbed wire fences waited to be sent to the gas chambers.

"They are the sort of scenes that flicker in black and white images from 50-year-old films of Nazi concentration camps, said the Daily Mail the morning after the image was first broadcast (7 August 1992).

On 7 August 1992 ITN lunchtime news (centre) Yet, as I explained in detail in my February LM article, this reproduced Dutch (top), picture fooled the world. The hidden truth behind it was that Turkish (top right) and there was no barbed wire fence surrounding the refugee and American broadcasts transit camp at Tropolje, and no barbed wire encircling (bottom)-all likening IT's pictures to Hitler's Fikret Alic and the other Bosnian Muslims. (After five years of concentration camps silence, ITN finally had to admit that this was true in the High Court in April.) It is also a matter of fact that the British news team themselves were the ones surrounded by barbed wire.

They were filming from inside a small agricultural compound next to the camp, which had been fenced in with barbed wire long before the war. By taking the pictures of Alic through this compound fence, they left the world with the clear impression that Alic and the camp were ringed by •

34 prisoners in Nazi-style camps.

lan Williams and Penny Marshall at Omarska and Tropolje great atrocity. TrP DA: 34: 13: 22 put

THE DOPE

SHEET THAT

DUPED THE

WORLD

Media researcher Graham Barnfield follows a trail of paperwork from Trnopolje to ITN HQ and beyond Juiv/August + 1997 1 a barbed wire fence, stoking up new fears of starving This is not a debate about trick photography. There is a huge difference between seeing the places filmed by ITN as camps, and seeing them as concentration camps. The refugee and transit camp at Trnopolje was certainly grim, and the detention and interrogation centre at Omarska was considerably grimmer. But neither bore any comparison to the concentration camps in which the Nazis slaughtered millions of Jews and others. Anything which suggested a comparison between Tropolje and, say, Auschwitz would not only have dangerously distorted the truth about the Bosnian conflict—a civil war, not a war of genocidal conquest. It would also do a grave injustice to the victims of the Nazi Holcaust, by belittling the scale of the century's ITN, however, seems to have done nothing to discourage such comparisons. Watching the news bulletins from 6 August, it is clear that ITN editors deployed their powerful

WTN

Worldwide Television News happened"?, LM, May 1997) them, he said, 'we are satisfied that these are not part n a recent attack on LM magazine, ITN editor-in-chief Richard Tait praised his people for showing such restraint' on the Bosnian camps story in 1992, and insisted that 'We never called them "concentration camps", newspapers did' (Spectator, 24 May 1997).

In fact the label "concentration camps' was not attached to Omarska and Trnopolje by unrestrained tabloid journalism. Before any newspaper editor had a chance to report on ITN's horror stories, these words were spelled out to the world's newscasters in a document that accompanied the ITN filma document distributed by a company, Worldwide Telvision News (WTN), that had close links with ITN itself. WTN sold ITN's footage overseas, along with a summary of the content of each picture sequence (the 'shot list') and some advice on interpreting them (the "dope sheet'). Following the shot list— very thin man shaking Penny Marshall's hand/pan barbed wire image again and again in order to make the maximum impact. My research has also shown how ITN broadcast only the most sensational moments from its interviews with the Bosnian Muslims through the barbed wire. For example, the sequence where a man standing next to Fikret Alic said that he felt safer in Tropolje, and believed it was not a prison but a refugee camp, was cut out, while the image of Alic behind the barbed wire appeared as a backdrop to almost every item in the bulletins (see '"Exactly as it Each of the news bulletins had at its heart an exclusive eye-witness report from the camps: Penny Marshall reported for News at Ten, Ian Williams for Channel Four News. Both journalists were rather careful in most of their descriptions.

Each explained that there were refugees in Tropolje, who, according to Williams were here simply because they have nowhere else to go, their homes having been destroyed', and both said that they had no first-hand proof of atrocities.

Yet Marshall and Williams left hanging the question of what kind of camps these really were. Marshall for example introduced her report for News at Ten by saying that "The Bosnian Serbs don't call Omarska a concentration camp...'.

The obvious implication was that others did call it a concentration camp, and Marshall left it open as to who was right. On Channel Four News, Ian Williams explained that they had seen 'seven alleged camps which were on the original Bosnian list of alleged concentration camps'. As regards five of concentration camps, at most they are refugee collection centres'. But the other two camps in northern Bosnia did give 'grave concern' about 'severe mistreatment'. Williams did not call Omarska and Tropolje concentration camps. But what conclusion was likely to be drawn from his distinction various refugees' —came a very informative piece of text: 'A British news team has the first independent proof of concentration camps being run by the Serbian authorities in Bosnia-Hercegovina.' As the ITN images went around the world by satellite, so too did this dope sheet publicising the phrase which ITN now deny ever using. Transmission times on the document suggest that it went out prior to the first broadcast of Marshall and Alic's famous meeting. This means that the notion that ITN had 'proof of concentration camps was in circulation among the world's broadcasters before the authors of headlines like 'Belsen 92' (Daily Mirror) and "The Proof (Daily Mail) had even set eyes on the footage. Television led the way, the newspapers followed. Who was responsible for the dope sheet that first told the world ITN's pictures should be taken as proof of concentration camps?

35 pant In Europe, the footage was distributed through the European Broadcast Union (EBU) which facilitates co-operation between broadcasters. The Dutch, German and Turkish news programmes which drew explicit parallels between the ITN pictures and Nazi camps in their August 1992 coverage are all EBU members.

But the EBU does not write its own dope sheets. It takes them from supplying agencies— in this case, WTN. WTN traded under the name UPI until 1967, when it entered a partnership with ITN. The partnership was dissolved in 1982, and the American television company ABC acquired an 80 per cent stake in WTN; but ITN still held 10 percent, and remains the corporation's largest UK shareholder. ITN and WTN share access to new footage and a central archive. As late as 1995, ITN executive Stuart Purvis was also a WTN board member. Even their company logos are almost identical.

BOSNIA FIVE YEARS ON

'CONCENTRATION

CAMPS...

minus the

GAS CHAMBERS

said US Congressman Tom La All of this suggests a very close relationship. The dope sheet could have originated even closer to ITN itself. It is standard practice in the film industry for the cameraman to provide the information on the sheets, and WTN sources confirm that camera crews usually write the text accompanying the films they supply. Anybody ordering footage from ITN's sales department also receives a shot list from a central database.

A charitable interpretation might see a company that enjoyed a close relationship with ITN supplying text that would, even in Richard Tait's eyes, have lacked 'restraint'. When dozens of clients got the wrong end of the stickvia the EBU- ITN got around to clearing the matter up. Hence Trnopolje became a concentration camp in the eyes of the world.

Cynics, on the other hand, might suggest that if the television industry's standard practices had been applied, the ITN news team -neither WTN nor of this murky story. between five non-concentrations camps and these two others?

If Marshall and Williams left the issue of whether or not these were concentration camps open to interpretation, the way in which ITN framed their reports ensured that only one interpretation was likely. The whole tone and structure of ITN's bulletins was as suggestive as the misleading barbed wire image itself. After lan Williams' report, for example, Channel Four News presented a background item, introduced with the image of Alic's torso behind the barbed wire, entitled 'Crimes of war?'. Accompanied by black and white archive footage of prisoners of war, it outlined how war crimes had been defined and outlawed after the horrors of the Nazi experience, drawing a clear connection between those events and the claims of 'possible war crimes' in the Bosnian camps.

US politicians to the ITN film from Omarska and Tropolje.

Bill Clinton, then the Democratic Party candidate in the approaching US presidential election, was reported as saying that, 'you can't allow the mass extermination of people and just sit by and watch it happen'. There followed a lengthy interview with Tom Lantos, a Democrat Congressman on the House Foreign Relations Committee, who declared that 'those horrendous pictures' were 'reminiscent of the concentration camps that the Nazis had during World War Two, minus the gas chambers.... The civilised world stood by during the early 1940s because it claimed not quite honestly that it didn't know what was going on. Well we now know what is going on. It is on our television screens every night'.

In fact, of course, 'it' (film from the camps) had only been on the world's TV screens for one night, nobody had been sitting and watching 'the mass extermination of people', and the idea of Nazi-style concentration camps • pant could have written the dope sheet themselves. I could not get Richard Tait to give ITN's side Either way, the trail of paperwork from Tropolje to ITN's HQ on Gray's Inn Road and beyond suggests that those who Channel Four News then went on to report the reactions of pat want to know the whole truth about the camps story will have to do more than round up the usual suspects among the tabloid press.

Dr Barnfield teaches Communication Studies at Sheffield Hallam University

36 its bulletins Channel 4 News turned up the contrast to make this graphic (6 August 1992)

LMI02

BOSNIA FIVE YEARS ON

ITN had no problem with the way

THE WORLD

UNDERSTOOD

4 'minus the gas chambers' is surely a contradiction in terms.

Yet Channel Four News presented all of this uncritically as good coin, allowing the tone of a vital international issue to be set by emotional statements from US politicians caught up in the heat of an election campaign.

The structure and the message of ITN's News at Ten was strikingly similar. After Penny Marshall's report from the camps, senior US politicians were wheeled on, shown the ITN bulletin, and given a free hand to draw loose parallels with the Nazi past. Senator Alfonso d'Amato explained that '50, 60 years ago, the leaders of the world say we didn't know what was happening and it was misinterpreted. We know what is happening now'. Tom Lantos was also brought in again, to say that the world now had to sort the Churchills from The News at Ten then reported that Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, while denying that Trnopolje and Omarska were concentration camps, had promised to allow greater access and improve conditions there. It should perhaps be pointed out', the ITN commentary added, that Mr Karadzic has a track record of promising ceasefires which never seem to happen. And the views of the Bosnian vice-president today were, not surprisingly, rather different.

The Bosnian Muslim vice-president Ejup Ganic then assured ITN viewers that, 'Ethnic cleansing and concentration camps are reality in Bosnia'. Nobody at ITN seemed to think it necessary to 'perhaps point out' that the Bosnian Muslim government had as bad a record as anybody when it came passing off war propaganda as indisputable fact.

So no, IT's famous bulletins of 6 August 1992 did not actually call the camps at Omarska and Tropolje in northern Bosnia 'Nazi-style concentration camps'. But having studied them all in some detail, it would come as a surprise to me if anybody had interpreted the news in any other way.

The world certainly saw the ITN reports as proof of concentration camps and a new Holocaust in Bosnia. In response to my allegations in LM about their pictures from Tropolje, ITN now says that this misinterpretation was not its fault. How did it respond to the global hysteria that greeted The ITN lunchtime news on the following day, 7 August 1992, provides an answer. Far from correcting the international interpretation of their pictures as evidence of Nazi-style atrocities, ITN advertised it and even revelled in it, at the same time acting as if this overnight international consensus on the existence of concentration camps had nothing to do with the way they presented their reports the night before. The backdrop to ITN's 7 August lunchtime report was again provided by the emblematic image of Fikret Alic

INSIDE THE CAMPS

supposedly ringed by a barbed wire fence at Tropolje camp.

The bulletin reported on how the world media had responded to ITN's film: 'ITN's pictures of the detention camps have been seen all over the world. The images provided the first real evidence of brutality towards prisoners in the former Yugoslav republics.

And they provoked international outrage from overseas television commentators. There then followed some examples of this international outrage', starting with excerpts from how the US network ABC News had introduced the ITN footage the night before: 'Faces and bodies that hint at atrocities of the past. But this is not history, this is Bosnia. Pictures from the camps: A glimpse into genocide? The ITN voiceover explained that 'It was the evidence the world had been waiting for', and detailed exactly what it was that the world had interpreted the ITN footage as evidence of: "The pictures flashed around the world. The Dutch talked of concentration camps. In Muslim Turkey they said ITN's pictures resembled Hitler's camps and brought the greatest disgrace to mankind. And the Germans said the pictures were reminiscent of World War Two.'

Next, against a backdrop of newspapers with banner headlines like 'BELSEN '92' alongside reproductions of the famous barbed wire picture, ITN reported that 'today's British press was unequivocal in its interpretation of the pictures, adding more pressure on the government to take action to intervene in the Yugoslav crisis. For me, the whole tone of ITN's post-event reporting demonstrated that in fact it did not have any problem with the way the world understood its news bulletins from the night before. As the reactions to the reports snowballed towards further Western intervention in Bosnia, ITN seemed entirely unembarrassed, indeed keen to boast, about its new role as foreign-policy maker. 'For now', the ITN lunchtime news report of 7 August 1992 ended, 'horror stories from Bosnia dominate the headlines. They clearly have generated a response in the United States. Their long-term effect may depend on the media's ability to come up with more.

Such was ITN's self-congratulatory response to the way in which their reports convinced the world there were concentration camps and genocide in Bosnia in August 1992.

Yet since the publication of my article The Picture that Fooled the World', IT has insisted that what matters is that their journalists did not refer to these places as 'Nazi-style concentration camps'. What point are they trying to make? •

Ireland imports health

SECOND OPINION

DR MIKE FITZPATRICK

panics I was on holiday in Ireland in June when Tony Blair issued his guarded apology for the role of the British government in the famine of the 184os. The sympathetic response to Blair from all sections of the Dublin elite indicated the growing role of cultural manifestations like the famine commemorations in strengthening the bonds between Ireland and Britain. In addition to emigrants, Ireland is now exporting traditional Irish commodities like victimhood (Sinead O'Connor), sentimentality (Ballykissangel, mock Irish pubs) and sanctimoniousness (Bob Geldof, Bono). These find a ready market in a Western world that seeks to compensate for its loss of confidence with self-indulgence and moralism. In turn, Ireland imports the cultural dross of Britain - notably its misanthropic preoccupations with issues like child abuse, drug addiction -and health scares.

One example illustrates the trend for last year's panic in Britain to turn up this Sunshine is hardly a threat to the Irish year in Ireland. My visit coincided, not only with the most sustained period of good weather-six days-l can ever remember in Ireland, but also with the launch of the Sunsmart Campaign. Promoted jointly by the Irish Cancer Society and the Irish Farmers Association, this campaign aims to alert Irish people, particularly "farming families', to the risk of skin cancer from ultra-violet radiation.

Now as somebody of typically Irish complexion, with potato white skin which turns lobster red after the briefest exposure to sunlight, and then slowly peels and returns to whiteness flecked with freckles, I have always scorned suntans and thought sunbathing an overrated activity. Yet even I cannot believe that sunshine is really a major threat to public health in Ireland. For a start, though farming families may spend much time outdoors, they do so in a country where the sun generally appears only in brief intervals between showers, and then only in any intensity on occasional days in the three months between May and September. For the rest of the time it rains, which is tiresome if you are on holiday, but if you're a farmer worried about skin cancer, highly reassuring.

Another reason why Irish farming families are unlikely to be at much risk of skin cancer is that, even when the sun comes out, they rarely remove enough clothes to get sunburned. As a child I vividly remember on the hottest days of summer when 'the men' sat down to tea in the field and cautiously loosened the top button or two of their shirts. This revealed a sharp border between a leathery, weatherbeaten, V-neck and the pale skin of the rest of the chest, skin that seemed rarely to be exposed to the sun, or indeed to any other form of light. As I recollect, most Irish farmers were reluctant to remove their jackets and their caps in any circumstances, never mind risking more intimate exposure. I was reminded of Irish reticence about the body during my recent holiday.

On one particular sunny day I went to a wonderful sandy beach in County Wicklow and on another to an Irish water sports theme park in the nearby mountains. In both locations I noticed a strange habit of local youth of clowning around in the water fully dressed. It seems that they come equipped with a change of clothes and instead of getting into swimming gear just jump into the water. At first I wondered whether the Sunsmart propaganda had got to them, but then I saw them changing back into their dry clothes with the sort of scrupulous modesty-and physical contortions-that have long disappeared from the beaches of Europe.

The fact that not even infants are allowed to wander naked in Ireland must make it one of the lowest risk countries in the world for sun-related skin cancers.

Yet the evening weather report on Irish television is now accompanied by warnings about the dangers of sunburn and recommendations about the maximum period of safe exposure. The Sunsmart campaign's guidelines on clothing and headgear, on using sunblocking creams and on the particular importance of protecting children were faithfully reported in all newspapers. Information leaflets are being distributed through schools and doctors' surgeries and special meetings are planned during the summer to raise awareness of skin cancer.

All this is, of course, depressingly familiar. Over the past few years we have had similar campaigns in Britain which exploit people's fears of rare but terrifying diseases to justify interfering in their leisure activities and regulating their behaviour. As a result I have spent much time either reassuring people that their minor skin blemishes are quite harmless or, having failed, cutting them out and sending them off to the lab. The result of what one expert has dubbed disaster dermatology' has been the flooding of skin clinics with the 'worried well' and an inevitable increase in the diagnosis of malignancy. However, in the vast majority of cases these are lesions which grow only slowly and are easily treated-and many may regress spontaneously.

The fear of the sun in countries that rarely see it is one of the more bizarre of the numerous health panics that have gripped the popular imagination over the past decade. The delayed appearance in Ireland of this-and other equally irrational scares about radon gas, nuclear waste and the 'heroin epidemic' - confirm that, despite all the hype about the Celtic tiger, Ireland remains captive to the anxieties and fears of the wider Western world.

The fact that it takes longer for health panics to reach Ireland reminds us that it is a backwater. The general election, which took place in early June, confirmed that, despite Ireland's affinity for the European and indeed global stage, the country's politics are not so much local as parochial. Even the supposedly extremist candidates were cringingly conservative.

Thus Sinn Fein campaigned largely as a group of community activists with a strong law and order line against drugs and crime. The Socialist Party (ex-Militant) took a revolutionary stand against water rates. Even the Greens seemed to be led, like all the other parties, by a bunch of grey men in suits. In the 1930s some Irish leftists won distinction, if not much popular support, in the League of Militant Atheists. Perhaps now is the time for the launch of a similarly principled campaign, provisionally titled League of Sun-Loving Irish Farming Families.

Do genes influence intelligence? Dr Stuart Derbyshire talked to top researcher Professor Robert Plomin about his search for genes which might influence variations in 1Q.

James Heartfield for one is unconvinced, see over the page. Other views are invited

THE SENSE WE WERE

BORN WITH?

These are strange times for those researching into the mysteries of genetics. Genetic research now breakthroughs offers dazzling in the understanding and treatment Aids and of diseases such as cancer, malaria. Yet at the same time, genetics researchers such as Robert Plomin of South London's Institute of Psychiatry are often treated more like neopotential Nobel Prize Nazis than winners because they are interested in genetic influences upon human behavi- Plomin's Most controversial is our. search for genes which might influence variations in intelligence.

David King, editor of GenEthics News, considers Plomin's research to be a 'very dangerous' step on the road towards 'downright eugenics'. King has organised a Campaign for Real Intelligence to try to prevent Plomin receiving further funding from the Medical Research Council. Mainstream clinical geneticists and ethicists are also concerned about Plomin's work on IQ. Two years ago Peter Harper, a leading British clinical geneticist, asked 'whether the research itself on genetic markers and IQ can be considered ethical' and purposively distanced himself from Plomin's work.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has LI02 set up a working party to consider the ethical, social and legal implications of research into the genetics of mental disorders. The wider implications are clear: if the working party decides that aspects of genetic research on mental disorders are ethically questionable, which they almost certainly will, then research into the normal variation in IQ will be considered even more problematic, as it cannot be presented as a medical investigation of a diseased state.

Significantly, unlike in the 1970s, critics of Plomin's work no longer dispute the scientific data. Instead they say that the research is 'unethical". This is a dramatic shift in attitudes towards scientific research. Rather than opposing specific applications of knowledge, the argument is being put that it is wrong to do the work to gain the knowledge in the first place. At base the argument says we should be afraid to find the truth.

and Critics of contemporary genes behaviour research often claim that the work carries with it anti-humanist assumptions-that we are governed by our genes-and indeed some of it does.

They also, quite rightly in some cases, point to possible harmful applications.

But the call for an 'ethical' limit on research is equally problematic, for it

EXCHANGE

suggests that we can neither handle the truth nor foster useful applications of the knowledge while preventing untoward ones. Rather than let this kind of ethical angst guide attitudes to research into genes and IQ, two questions should be asked. What does science tell us about the real relationships at work? And what constructive, beneficial use could be made of any findings? The starting point for investigation is to grasp that all knowledge is cultural and social, not natural or genetic, in origin. Without the accumulated knowledge of society, and the socialisation process undergone by each member of society after birth, there would be no such thing as purposive thinking and intelligence. Connected to this, average intelligence is rising generation by generation (a process hidden by the fact that the average IQ is always set at 100).

In addition, social and educational do have differences children among an impact on their educational abilities.

A study in demonstrated that 1989 children born of lower class parents but adopted into middle class homes of 12 IQ points scored an average higher than those adopted into lower class homes (C Capron and M Duyme, ?

Study Plomin et al, Behaviour Genetics, 1994, 24: 207-215 Bouchard et al, Science, 1990, 250: 223-228. .. . . Pedersen et al, Behaviour Genetics, 1985, 15: 407-419 Machard and Science, 1981, 12: 1055-1059 The table shows the results of four studies examining the inheritance of 'IQ' as measured by a battery of cognitive tests. Zero represents no relationship between the two twins' scores; 1 represents exact concordance between the scores

FUTURES EXCHANGE

Fal 'Assessment effects of of socio- IQ in a full economic status on cross-fostering study, Nature, 1989, 340: 552-554). And yet, for all that we know intelligence is not 'natural, there is now a wealth of evidence to show that those researching into genetic influences on intelligence are on to something.

While intelligence itself is not a simple product of the genes, at any moment evidence is that genetic in time the do impact individual factors upon variations within the normal range of intelligence. Over the past 20 years a lot of research has been published on the degree of similarity between family members for general cognitive ability, usually summarised under the rubric of 'IQ'. The most powerful evidence comes Monozygotic Dizygotic (identical) twins (non-identical) reared apart twins reared apart •50 .84 •72 •52 - -78 from the study of identical or 'monozygotic' (MZ) twins separated at an early age. The degree of similarity between the adult twins is attributed to their shared genetic inheritance, and the degree of difference is attributed to their different environment and/or upbringing. This design is not perfect. Any similarity in the twins' upbringing incidental to their genetic inheritance, which results in similar performance, can 22263 be misattributed to genetic influence.

This problem is particularly acute for the same sex and age and always look But these problems in experiment design can be overcome. One way is to compare the MZ twins with a group of fraternal or 'dizygotic' (DZ) twins. DZ twins only share an average of 50 per cent of their genetic inheritance and should, on average, only be half as alike as the MZ twins. Any deviation from this pattern is indicative of effects which are non-genetic in origin. So a simple way to assess genetic influence over any the measured similarity in MZ twins reared apart and multiply by two. More powerful and sophisticated methods can other siblings and adopted siblings can be used as controls to eliminate the effects of upbringing. The table summarises the results of four studies examining the similarity between twins on a variety of measures of cognitive ability. Combined, studies involved more than 10 000 twin pairs. The analysis outlined above suggests that 48 per cent of the observed variability in cognitive performance is associated with genetic factors.

Reviewing the evidence from adopion studies in the journal Science 'lomin took a cautious view: "The erro surrounding [an estimate of 50 per cent heritability] mav be as high as 20 per ent, so we can only say with confidence that the heritability of IC between 30 and 70 per cent. Nonetheless, even if the heritability of IQ scores is at the bottom of this range, it is a remarkable finding. To account for 30 per cent of the variance of anything as complex as IQ scores is a remarkable achievement.? (Science, 1990, 248: 183-188) 3: 2: 4: area, society Plomin told me that, when he began this work eight years ago, the evidence for a genetic influence over intelligence was 'better than the evidence for anything else, better than the evidence of heritability for height or schizophrenia'.

The quantitative evidence for a genetic effect on variation in intelligence was enough to convince Plomin to set about trying to find the genes concerned. Plomin's approach is to take a sample of subjects representing the top and bottom five per cent of the IQ distribution and then to examine the portion of the subjects' DNA most likely to be involved in neural functioning.

Differences between the two groups then become candidate genes for further So this is the scientific story so far: family studies indicate that genes play a role in variation in intelligence, but we do not as yet know which genes, or how many, are involved. Finding these genes will immediately raise the question of what society or individuals should do with the knowledge. My view is that, far from being afraid to find the truth in this area, society should be prepared to act upon it, even though economic, educational and other forms of inequality are the biggest barrier to most people realising their potential.

For if genes do account for about 50 per cent of the variability in IQ scores, and if we believe that general cognitive ability is useful in life, then manipulating genes or their effects to increase IQ should be investigated. Plomin agrees that in principle this is possible, but points to practical difficulties and emphasises his aim of preventing IQ from being lowered rather than being heightened'. He does not like the idea of prenatal selection vuppie parents to select their kids' and advises any would-be parents: "if you want bright kids marry a bright person.'

Plomin has the more modest aim of • 6

A FOOL'S ERRAND

4 investigating how genes may interact with environment to impact upon IQ He does not rule out the possibility of a pharmacological intervention, thinks it is unlikely before we understand how genes work at the biochemical level, and this is 'still not understood even for Huntington's disease' where a single gene causes all the problems.

understand intelligence', Plomin told me, 'we will need to detect many genes, each of which accounts for less than one per cent of the variability. Current techniques can only detect gene effects of five per cent or more. Plomin's caveats are well made. But he is being a little naive. It seems clear that, in time, it will be possible to use the current research to mount a pharmacological intervention if we choose to. Unless scientists like Plomin are pre- James Heartfield doesn't believe in IQ ] very so often society sends the scientists on a fool's errand, to solve a question to which there is no scientific solution. Such are the search for the philosopher's stone that turns iron into gold, the inquiry into the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin, the attempt perpetual motion the search for the machine, and measure of IQ or intelligence quotient.

In each case, the object of enquiry could not yield to scientific enquiry because it is not properly a natural or technical entity that is being investigated. What presents itself as if it were a natural or technical object is in fact a human need, only fetishistically misunderstood to be a real thing.

July /August e 1997 pared to face up to this, and defend it if they think it is in principle a good idea, they will find it hard to win support for Plomin is rightly excited about the work: 'I could have chosen to study height but it is not interesting. In terms of societal importance you couldn't get better than intelligence, [and] it's really happening, there is a real change of tide.' He would like to believe that the ethical angst is a storm in a teacup pro- 'incredibly condescending' reporters who see themselves as protecting the public' against genetic determinism. He told me that he is trying to organise an epidemiological study to determine what people really think about genes and behaviour research. I hope it works out as I am sure the report will be interesting, but I doubt it will

UTLI

The philosopher's stone expressed a desire to turn iron into gold, at an early stage of the development of the market, when gold was considered to be valuable in itself, while iron was only a base metal. The real answer to the problem was not to be found in chemistry, but in trade. Likewise the yankee quest for the perpetual motion machine expressed a desire to be rid of dependence upon labour to make goods for sale—a fool's errand if ever there was one. These are problems that can only really be resolved by social science because, though they present themselves as natural-scientific objects, they are in fact confusions generated within society.

Today scientists look to find the natural components of intelligence in the C ? reveal everything in the garden to be as rosy as Plomin seems to expect. There is general unease today with all things scientific, and there is particular hostility towards aspects of genetic research.

'Sometimes', Plomin told me, 'I want to put my head down and do my work'.

This is understandable. Plomin's work has the potential for greatly benefiting humanity, yet he is denounced as irresponsible for looking at the issue. Who would not get fed up and want to get away from the fuss? But the quiet life is not an option: scientists cannot afford to retreat in the face of professional or public hostility. Only through open dialogue and a public defence of this kind of work will any of us be able to deal with our critics. This is more than an exercise in assuaging public concern—it is a struggle for integrity and survival. •

CHAN

The principle, 'freedom of enquiry demands that they should have the utmost liberty to proceed. But equally social scientists have an absolute obligation to tell them that they are on a fool's errand. Indeed we have known that this is a fool's errand for 190 years, since the German philosopher GWF Hegel first exposed the pretensions of phrenology-the science of judging intelligence and character by the shape of the skull. Hegel wrote it must be regarded as a complete denial of Reason to pass off a bone as the actual existence of consciousness' (Phenomenology of Mind, 1807, 1977 OUP ed, p205). Hegel's confident dismissal of a natural basis to intelligence did not arise from any great knowledge of phrenology-still less of

FUTURES EXCHANGE

For nearly inecualit genetics. He did not need to understand either of those things, because he did understand the character of intelligence The quest to find intelligence hardwired into the genes is just a confusion, as absurd as trying to find it in the bones of the skull. Such 'intelligence' as is genetically coded, like the walking motions found in babies, or the spider's knowledge of how to spin a web is, by not intelligence at all, but mere instinctual repetition. Genetically inherited? Fathers pass on intelligence to their sons in between the covers of carmanuals, but not in between the sheets.

Alive perhaps to the absurdity that intelligence could be inherited, scientists take refuge in the bastard concept 'intelligence quotient' or IQ. If intelligence may not by definition be passed through the genes, then perhaps the capacity for thinking might. Might IQ not be genetically inherited, if intelli- "intelligence quotient' is an unsustainable category. It is an oxymoron, where the noun 'quotient', a specifically limited amount, is at odds with its adjective "intelligence'.

very nature intelligence has no limitations, is not parcelled out in specific amounts. If intelligence were finite, it would not be intelligence, but mere You can only describe rote learning. a person's intelligence quantitatively at a given moment. Is he asleep, or in prison, or living in Norfolk? Then he has little need of his wits and will doubtless leave them undeveloped. But the idea that God—or nature-has rationed out the intelligence at birth is just a confusion about what intelligence is.

Intelligence is something that people participate in and contribute to, but it is not a natural property of individual human beings. The impact of head-start programmes of early learning in the United States shows that concentrated teaching can raise IQ scores. So too can listening to classical music immediately beforehand improve your score on an IQ test. Each generation the tested IQ scores rise by 15 per cent-the 'Flynn effect. Whatever it is that is being tested, 1600 IQ has served the role of justi it is not a finite allotment of intelligence.

Though the capacity for intelligence is not finite, neither is intelligence a merely abstract potential, like strength.

Rather, it has a real and determinate content. IQ tests have, over the years been designed to factor out cultural knowledge, under pressure from educational rights campaigners. Verbal reasoning is eschewed in favour of visual sequence tests with geometrical shapes, in the mistaken belief that these somehow capture native intelligence.

But for an intelligence test actually to measure an individual's participation in and mastery of the intelligence of his time the tests would be very different indeed. Back when IQ testing was the norm, the proper thing would have been to set hour-long essay questions on the institution of the monarchy or the theory of evolution, or ask a testee to solve a chess problem or play a piece of music. Doubtless that would have led to discrimination on class grounds. But it would at least have the virtue of testing people's mastery of the intelligence of their own time. The abstract questions in modern IQ tests measure knowledge of nothing at all. In their desire to abstract from cultural differences, the authors devised abstracted from real understanding.

There are no naturally intelligent people, living in the wilderness, waiting for their native intelligence to be woken from its slumbers, because there is no abstract reasoning without a real Aware, perhaps of the unsustainability of the concept of an IQ that is strictly determined by the genes, today's fashion is to propose a mix of 'nature' and 'nurture'. But this is a category error.

The influence of society is not comparable to the influence of nature on an individual, because even our individual 2: 4: 5: ring physiognomy is a product of society, in that it is only at a given level of productivity that the current population could have come into being. Social and natural causes cannot be subtracted from each other any more than apples can be subtracted from pears. Surely we should reject a theory that is so dependent upon the deus ex machina of 'nurture' to match its theory to its findings.

Finally, how are we to understand the scientists' fascination with IQ. The answer is not to be found in any natural object, but in society itself. This model of IQ is drawn from property inheritance not from a natural process. For nearly a century, IQ has served the role of justifying social inequality. Challenged to explain the social inequalities that accompany capitalism, ideologues have asserted that we live in a meritowhere income is according to merit, and merit is defined The contemporary elevation of intelligence as a virtue is largely a concession to the petty prejudices of the middle classes, whose artificially sustained privileges take some explaining. It is a mark of the self-loathing of our modern elites that they take refuge in the fantasy of IQ tests instead of more manly virtues like courage or perseverance-but then nobody would believe them if they said that those were the things that marked them out for success. Only nerds join Mensa.

What then of the evidence? None of it is to date convincing. And considering the perverse amount of effort put into discovering the natural basis of intelligence, that in itself is an indicator.

Where such a discovery is announced at it with all the scepticism owed the discovery of the philosopher's machine or the location of 3: 6: 1° Co

PHOTO: MICHAFI KRAMER

• summer Holidaying in Spain this summer? Harry and Sally Metcalf suggest you swallow your doubts and go to the bullfights

NO BUL

times Signs When I went to I felt a kind of joy I hadn't felt in my the polling booth entire adult people have a kind of jauntiness today life....Around my neighbourhood been absurd. A lack of shame is one thing, but purposes, you cannot help? It is as vacuous as the poster campaign for London Pride beer, When I heard Tony Blair's speech on the steps of Number 10, it led me to think that perhaps the gay community has done for health and safety, neurotic individualism, trivial consumerism posing as self-expression, anti-politics, the denial of class, contempt for democracy, sanctimoniousness, and Soho/ Islington prejudices. The whole depressing in embryo in a Compton Street cappuccino bar. If they could overlook the drug-taking, not only Chris Smith, but the entire cabinet would feel at home at Pride. Me, I'll be hiding in the But then Pride (full title: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride) has always what does it mean to take pride in something like sexual orientation which, to all intents and politics what it once did for music and fashion. We had it all first: the obsession with New Labour package might have been nurtured which urges 'whatever you do, take Pride'.

Des de Moor is a singer and club promoter cabaret tent.

PRIDE

ALMOST ASHAMED OF

J participate in either, but you have to adopt Pride today is a vast marketing exercise, its chief sponsor a major brewery. The march, or parade, as it is now known, has been detached from the festival, and both have long been stripped of any meaning other than their mere Slogans and chants, even the old standby 'we're here because we're queer, have long been silenced by the wordless, brain-shattering f you are gay, summer brings Pride as winter brings Christmas. You may not want to a coping strategy. Mine is to be a performer on the Pride cabaret stage, which gives me a reason for being there and a place to hide from existence. The inarticulacy of Pride is symbolised in that ubiquitous accessory, the whistle.

shrilling of these plastic horrors.

the crowd. expression of popular perverse the contrast Athletic Federation the use of starting ban. An electronic like a shroud has from New Labour the new handgun itself to abandon been lifted....lt is Beatrix Campbell between a great what is on offer will against the knowledge that is authoritarian, variation seems the most likely without saying anticipation of anything. It is replacement. and abject.' is preparing centralised The British pistols, in

WAR WITH THE

DEATH TAKEN OUT

A Belfast man sued a local glazier after his when a pallet fell off to be unable to walk produced of the said a lorry, and claimed for three weeks. He when pictures were Mr Jeffrey Shields dropped his claim foot was crushed to take on a look of resignation. The next its ground, the bull swayed on uncertain legs.

Time stood still. Then the bull's face seemed moment all life left his body and he toppled sideways into the sand. It was like a slowof a cannon. The initial he bull entered the arena ike a shell from the barrel charge and skid into the barrier seemed like a circus officials were shocked by the 'entertainment' Senior San Fransisco leading the Orange Glorious Twelfth, a week after the parade on the accident. The cheers woke us from our trance. We there was no escape. It was as if somebody motion movie, brought to an end only by the tumultuous applause of the crowd which rose were no longer innocent tourists detached from the proceedings. For us as for the bull, was demanding to know whose side we were on, the bull's or the matador's? We chose to as one to salute the matador.

salute the matador. tossing them to the floor. First blood went to a picador jabbing his steel-tipped pic into the covered with splayed changed when the picadors bull attacked with awesome ferocity, at one entered on horseback. The point lifting man and horse off the ground and humped muscle at the top of the bull's neck.

Fascinated and stunned, we sat rigidly watching the action, eyes dolls, giant inflatable consultant Jack Davis at his 5oth birthday their skin were par laid on by political fetish gear having party. The men in objects sewn into for the course, as were the blow-up land at the end of May. Central Los Ange- One of them grasped the essence of the game when greeting his hosts as the 'Original Gangstas' of a les who toured Enghere is a euphemism for slow and soft, it as lyrical as | liked. Since lyrical cricket I was invited to be bloodletting or cruelty. It is an art form which celebrates human life in the manner of the bull's death. The people around us had not come to see the torture and humiliation of anivation of man above this. In saluting the courage, and The bullfight has little in common with mals, but the nobility of the bull and the eleinstinctive bravery of the bull, the crowd paid homage to man's conscious The picadors were replaced by men on foot, carrying banderillas -pairs of yard-long sticks with four-centimetre harpoon-shaped half a dozen of these were embedded in the bull's neck, and the ring was cleared for the In the final act, the bull faced only one steel points at one end. After five minutes, fingers like children at a horror movie.

ultimate confrontation. was beyond the pale: ritual which climaxed with a man dressed as an Apache being piece de resistance penis and live sex some felt that the shows. However sodomised with As this season began another Compton died. Dennis Compton, the Brylcreem Boy, who, in the summer of 1947 scored more runs and more centuries than anybody before or since; and he scored them with a style and courage that nobody who saw him will ever forget. My father told me about Compton when he gave me my first bat. More recently, game made in heaven'. seems to me that this injunction embodies the most fundamental misconception about cricket-a game that is cruel, lonely and 'To have some idea of what it's like', says batsman Geoff Boycott, 'stand in the outside lane of a motorway, get your mate to drive his car at you at 95mph and wait until he is 12 yards away before you decide which way to above all unforgiving of error.

The crowd's craving for excellence was borne out by its reaction to shortcomings on the matador's part. During the last contest in the programme, the matador failed to kill the bull cleanly after many attempts. The crowd grew increasingly hostile. The matador enlisted the help of three more men before the bull finally succumbed. At this the crowd affirmed human life and achievement.

man. The proximity of man and beast was front each other alone, the bull is winded while his strength remains intact. His speed has gone but not his power, so that he will be even more deadly once provoked. But to be provoked, his adversary must come closer and closer to him. This is the quintessential moment of the bullfight, in which the deadly shocking. By the time matador and beast con- It turned out this was leather-clad woman. simply a 'metaphor' forced upon native administered by a for alcohol being his last first-class innings. Recalling the great deeds of Richards' career, I realised that the lyric but the epic. Of willow and the man I I sat with my father in the autumnal sun watching Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards play appropriate poetic form for cricket is not the Alan Hudson believes that life is an elaborate metaphor for cricket jump'. Boycott speaks from the experience of before skittling his stumps with the last ball of being run over by Michael Holding on a rapid surface at Sabena Park, Kingston. Holding beat the Yorkshireman five times for pace Cricket is war with the death taken out.

Perhaps this is what appeals to the Compton Homies and Popz, a cricket team from South became incensed. They rose as one, jeering matador and throwing seat covers at him until he was forced to leave the ring in humiliation. But when the bull was dragged from the ring, it was cheered and applauded in his stead. In the crowd's response to failure, the bullfight affirms life by its pursuit of it became even more proximity of man and bull must result in the At first, the matador beguiled the bull with ing replaced the stick with a sword, man manipulated bull to a point where he was able to kill him from the front, going over the right horn and thrusting between the arch of the shoulder blades. Valiantly attempting to stand a piece of cloth placed over a stick. Then, havdeath of one or the other.

CANNES

YOU KICK IT?

I was at the fiftieth Cannes Film Festival to • summer ally be enjoyed on a terrace with a couple of Seared salmon with roast vine tomatoes and A recipe for a summer lunch which should idebottles of chilled rosé. If you cannot get wild salmon, substitute good quality farmed fish.

sauce vièrge (serves four)

SUMMER LUNCH

THE LONG, HOT

times Signs of Oliver Stone-style hell, in which the cast of organise a major celebrity's presence characters is more desperate than in Robert Ensconced in their own villa or hotel suite, the Agent and the Publicist are keen to ensure ] there. Cushy number? More like two weeks Altman's The Player (best director, 1992).

4 tail fillets of salmon, skinned and 100ml extra virgin olive oil weighing about 150g each 12 tomatoes on the vine Extra-virgin olive oil Juice of 1/2 lemon ood ingredients are the nost important element in cooking. If you start with the best quality produce and keep it simple, the results are guaranteed to safely I'll go' and 'Hip Strathclyde plant are objecting to overalls slogans such as My name's Wee Joe and Workers at ICI's bearing safety their best efforts, the main talking-point is the availability of tickets for prestigious parties.

People who you might have been on nodding terms with beforehand become your bestest friend if you can get them into an MTV bash or the lavish opening party for The Fifth Element, which featured a gigantic spaceship built in that their clients are seen and heard. Despite Cut the tomatoes into bunches of three, driz- 2 vine-ripened tomatoes, peeled, 1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed Maldon sea salt and pepper seeded and chopped 8 basil leaves truffles (though not averse to any of these).

What I mean are ingredients that sing with freshness: sparkling red mullet and John Dory, But if your base materials are inferior, you are probably wasting your time. Not that I am suggesting a diet of lobster, foie gras and please. Australia-the Brits. reports of uniforms Hop Safety Daddio being vandalised. still fair game in Zing'. There are One minority is The dailies also take glossy ads for film that will not be winning any Jury prizes, such as The Trade Journalist holes up in the hotel basement. From these bunkers, they frantically produce daily newsheets which are distributed in hotel lobbies early each morning.

the bay for just one evening.

per, and heat gently. Preheat a cast iron grill cue), brush the fish with olive oil, season with minutes. Meanwhile, mix together the ingredients for the sauce, season with salt and pepzle with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and roast at 200°C in a preheated oven for 10-15 until hot (vou can also cook this on a barbemade their skin still glistening with protective slime; plump, golden chickens; and, in July and August, the juicy peaches, fragrant apricots and purple-staining cherries that make every It is here, on the fruit and veg counter, that biggest impact. With hi-tech food storage and have supermarket giants day a summer holiday. the last year 22 per cent The Anti-Discrimination board said that *Pom' is acceptable. ruled that the term The Human Rights Commission has Opportunities and Equal followed by David Puttnam. Chris Smith, The Sex Files: A New Dimension In Ecstasy.

Meanwhile the Showbiz Journalist is allowed above ground to track the glamour and gossip This year's Wannabes were not the Spice Girls but the British government, closely new Secretary of State for National Heritage, that will attract interest back home.

of crushed waxy potatoes with a bunch of salt and pepper, and sear, skin-side down for 3-4 minutes. Sear the other side for a further minute. Serve the salmon, perhaps on a bed roasted tomatoes and the warm sauce Strawberries with mascarpone spooned over the top. olive oil and a few torn basil leaves, they taste Every year, I make the same mistake. Although never enticed by the punnets that sit out the winter in the chill cabinet, when the 'new season' crop from Spain and the USA spills out Maldon sea salt, a drizzle of peppery Tuscan divine.) Strawberries are another illustration.

global sourcing, the seasonal availability of many foodstuffs has been replaced by their year-round presence on the shelves. But this The supermarkets influence producers to opt for high-yield, long-shelf-life varieties which can be easily cultivated. Flavour and texture are extension of choice is not quite as it seems.

came from Britons, whinging Pommie of all complaints mostly objecting to being called And talking of bastards'. the winners of the British film studio franchises, who will receive Lottery-funded Arts enough to make Britain a Player Meanwhile protravelled to the South of France to announce Council grants worth a total of £92.25m ducer and formet studio boss David Puttnam standards). by Hollywood (hardly Beat the mascarpone with a whisk. Add a little caster sugar to taste and serve as a dip © Neil Haidar BBC1's Masterchef 1996 1 tub mascarpone caster sugar 500g ripe strawberries with the strawberries. strawberries will be the real thing. They never own fruit farm, and you will remember what onto the open shelves in May, my resolve gives way. Like everybody else, I hope that those things which look and even smell like are and I never learn. But harvest your own in July, from your own garden or from a pick-your- They smell like real (Sliced thickly, with a generous sprinkling of sacrificed in favour of appearance, price and Tomatoes are a prime example. In the sumtomatoes and they are more than twice the price of their pale and watery counterparts.

mer months, my local Tesco stocks vineripened tomatoes. consistent supply. official. An attempt in Australia, the touring no more heroes -it's statue to WG Gracethat there really are he of the unfeasibly cricket side will be Hastings to erect a heartened to hear

ducer and former studio boss David Puttnam

LETTING IT (NEARLY)

ALL HANG OUT

rriving on an American beach for the first time last year I sprang into the • Neil Haidar BBCt's Masterchef 1996 the fuss is about. (Sliced thickly, with a generous sprinkling of he of the unfeasibly wide bat and other been refused. In its unsporting but not place will be two How appropriate. techniques -has actually illegal anonymous cricketers. dip. My American friends were horrified by my diately they would be forced to leave. I now realise that on many beaches in the USA it is an arrestable offence for a girl to remove the top half of her bikini, even in pursuit of an all- English girl abroad routine of removing my clothes and skipping merrily off for a suggestion that they should join me, and informed me that if I did not cover up immeover tan. shore break and drilled in the organ-rupturing turbulence. The thrill of it is beyond hyperbole. You really have to be there-so long as you are not on my wave. Nigel Villalard hot summer's day eliminates the need for a wetsuit. A sense of freedom is essential to the surfing trip and sheathing oneself in five-millimetre neoprene is akin to donning a body-sized condom (even

SURF'S UP

IG Ballard's verdict on ban on the film of his Westminster Council's a Toronto psychiatrist Dr Daniel de Souza, A sad little island' Britain, following book Crash My American girlfriends could not understand my objections to enforced enrobement, telling me that at least it meant our more delicate areas would not be exposed to the sun's harmful rays. Besides, they said, and I suspect this was the real reason, some of us are less favoured than others, and who wants to see smugly past while the rest of us lie in the sand troughs nubile young bodies bouncing attitude. The only way to conquer that fickle bitch mother nature is to engage the action at full throttle. Anything less and you are cede is to invite retribution. Better to hook-in, Carving up the waves and hopping the chop, windsurfing is a buzz which demands a certain Fear is a self-fulfilling prophesy: to conswimming. from having eardrums calcified by gallons of icy North Sea water). Summer brings more of this may not prevent the deafness that comes the right kind of weather, but fewer waves.

Through the interminable flat days, when each journey to the beach anti-climaxes with the vista of the becalmed ocean, the surfer craves waves; and when it finally happens, when the surfs up, everything is up.

counselling' to people has set up a support a new magazine with The World Review is an interesting new whose Tamagotchi 'virtual pets' die. group to give *bereavement Washington, The Struggle for Control of the minister's entourage, touting his new book about the close connections between Hollywood and World's Film Industry. Looks like Puttnam, who one insider told me has a direct line to Number 10, wants to establish an equally seen hanging around the was ludicrous. Have we forgotten the pleasures of sunblock like the England cricket team is Well, as I see it, having 'safe fun in the sun' while covered from head to toe in clothes and a good baking, with somebody on hand to massage just a little bit more after-sun into our delicate parts? This is the year to throw caution to the wind, pink bits out for the lads.

After all, nobody is going to recognise you carved out by our leaden thighs?

Then try again. If you stand on the shore and listen to windsurfers you can hear them shouting. They are cursing their own cowardice and damning their ineptitude, while grunting the gear round and willing the wind to suck the rig out of the brine and into action. You always want one more blast, because it makes you feel like a god. Once more off the lip, carving the board in a graceful and controlled arc, lock-out and try to dominate the spewy soup.

the early tumescences of another set rolling in. The lines should be clean, held up by an When it is working perfectly, each wave breaks from a single peak. This breaking cusp of green water is the focus of the wave's energy, where every surfer dreams of being. To get Surfing is better than sex. A perfect swell is the ultimate turn-on. It stokes you up. Far out, offshore breeze to create the best shape.

the further the better, lines of shadow formmight like to consider the difference is, they certain other papers will be dealing with their own books. As the magazine says, book reviews -but authors to pen its customary, it has adopting. As is Cannes was glamorous as well as frenetic.

Tuxedos and evening dresses are a must. Real champagne flowed at every party. But in this war zone of the rich and beautiful, the most successful films were all about failure and squalor. Gary Oldman's directing debut, the autobiographical Nil by Mouth, won Kathy Burke (better known as Waynetta Slob) the intimate relationship. with your clothes back on. But, boys, do not feel obliged to let that belly hang out. I hear In a bar the measure is both not enough and too much. A single will be drowned if the whole mixer is used, and a large one plus sunburn to that sensitive area can be very serious indeed. Andrea Morris flipping the rig and sheeting-in to a chorus of Never accept imitations. In a bar, ask for Gordon's, and Sapphire for the home. Do not praise which only you can hear. And you do it till you drop, until either you or your kit is be tempted by cheap East European brands or Steve Bowler sails a Mistral Screamer finished. ORIGINAL GIN Cord there and be in control, manoeuvring as radically as possible in relation to the wave, is a guarantee of elation. Worth all the waiting and all the hours floundering as a gremmie, it even compensates for being sucked into a monster authors themselves'. of new technology, about the authors' expected to write former champion more accurately is opposing the *No one can be Tony Benn, the views than the joint Palme D'Or winners, Taste of Cherry winners, it seems as if the film industry is in best actress award for her role as Oldman's battered mum. Even she admits she is less glamorously gorgeous. Moreover, the (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran) and The Eel (Shomei Inamura, Japan), did not seem to have a Publicist or an Agent. Judging by the award- Madame Mysterioso denial of itself. than mixer is probably too much for the novice. The solution is to use two-thirds of the mixer with empty bottle back when the bar staff clear the table). Be sure to ask for ice and lemon and never accept tonic from a pump. Finally, unless wearing driving gloves and a car coat, do not a single measure (do not snatch the not-quite- Alex Cameron used to be the best bartender order a 'G & T'. in Glasgow and then smear anything that sounds cheerily parochial like London gin. Similarly, do not use 'own brand' tonic water; only you know who. The perfect gin and tonic is to be had at home with friends at dusk. Take a highball glass (250ml), slice a circle of lemon rind, fold and squeeze until the around the rim. Pack the glass with ice cubes, add a half-slice of lemon; pour an inch of gin into the glass, fill it up with tonic, stir and enjoy.

zest pops from its pores ith Oasis singing about it, and remarketing courtesy of trendsetting design studio Tomato, gin and tonic is losing its reputation as the tipple for old duffers and acquiring a new image as a truly adult drink. And rightly so, for it is ice cool, refreshing and looks good too. But the summer queen of the spirits does not reveal her to just anybody, and newcomers should heed the following.

secrets would 'press each grounds that MPs Commons on the electronic voting other's buttons'. in the House of introduction of

All books available from JP Graphics Ltd, BM JP Graphics, London WCIN 3XX. Make cheques payable to JP Graphics; add 75p for postage and packing.

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READING

BETWEEN THE LINES

Environmentalists have been applauded for introducing a moral dimension to politics, but does it

BATTLE FOR THE

RISK, ENVIRONMENT

TREES: THREE MONTHS OF

AND MODERNITY: TOWARDS

RESPONSIBLE ANCESTRY

A NEW ECOLOGY

Merrick Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski Godhaven Ink and Brian Wynne (eds) £3 pbk Sage £13.95 pbk

DO YOU REMEMBER GLOBAL FREEZING? AUGUSTUS

Owsley Stanley III, a leading sixties acid head quit America for Queensland Australia in the seventies fearing the onset of another Ice Age in the northern hemisphere. Apparently his web page still details his crank theories about this particular postulated 'end of civilisation as we know it'.

Augustus Owsley Stanley III may indeed have taken too much LSD but his story reminds us that the fear of a coming Ice Age was widespread in the late seventies. Books were published, and earnest scientific debate ensued. Funny how you forget. Twenty years later the world lives in fear of the Risk. 'greenhouse effect' and global warming. Many of those who warn about the greenhouse effect are the same people who warned us of the coming Ice Age. No doubt Augustus Owley Stanley's equivalents today are moving to Alaska, but very few people are questioning society's credulity towards theories of environmental catastrophe, even though those theories can turn through 180 degrees within a generation.

Factor 4, a new report by the Club of Rome, a high-powered group of leading academics, argues the need to drastically reduce our consumption of raw materials if the development of the South is to be 'sustainable'. Their intellectual gall is remarkable. In the 197os the Club of Rome published an enormously influential report, one of the founding texts of modern matter that what they say is wrong, asks PETER RAY

THE GOOD GREEN LIE

THE SOCIAL

RECONSTRUCTING

CONSTRUCTION OF

NATURE: ALIENATION,

NATURE

EMANCIPATION AND THE

Klaus Eder

DIVISION OF LABOUR

Sage £13.95 pbk Peter Dickens Routledge £13.99 pbk environmentalism, entitled The Limits to Growth, which argued that fossil fuel and other mineral resources were being used up by the booming postwar economies at such a rate that they would soon be exhausted. Gold, they predicted, would run out by the early 198os, oil by the 1990s. The Limits to Growth was proved wrong on all counts, but that has not stopped Factor 4 from being taken seriously.

The abandoned and discredited theories of environmental catastrophe are piling up, but nothing it seems can stand in the way of environmentalism. The assumption that nature imposes a limit on human industry and progress is so widely held that Environment sociologist Klaus Eder says we live in a 'post-environmentalist & Modernity society', in which these assumptions have ceased to be the property of marginal pressure groups and have formed a new "masterframe' through which society is understood and through which conflicts over resources are fought out (The Social Construction of Nature, p180). More recent anxieties about the environmental limits on society, from particulates through radiation to biodiversity loss, are no less dependant than their predecessors on speculation or contentious reading of the scientific evidence. But society's willingness to believe in approaching environmental catastrophe is unaffected by mere facts.

Global warming or global freezing...it doesn't seem to matter whether the world is to be consumed by fire or ice just as long•

THERE IS SOMETHING DEEPLY CYNICAL ABOUT SOCIOLOGISTS' SYMPATHY WITH ECOLOGICAL POLITICS.

THEY KNOW THAT GREEN ARGUMENTS ABOUT LIMITS ARE NOT TRUE AND THEY ARE QUITE EXPLICIT ABOUT IT 1 as it is to be consumed—imminently. The willingness to believe in looming apocalypse is based on an emotional state more than it is on a judgement of the evidence; there is a need to believe that such a catastrophe is about to get us unless something is done to stop it, the details are less important.

At the same time those who do 'do something', who take action on the basis of the supposed environmental imperative, have become increasingly popular. Indeed they are near saints and martyrs in the eyes of an admiring public. Think of Swampy, Animal or Muppet Dave, chaining themselves to concrete blocks buried in hazardous underground chambers in a desperate effort to thwart the evil developers and save the innocent trees. Ten tears ago they would have been dismissed as loonies, hippies, scroungers, anarchists or troublemakers.

Today they are praised as selfless pioneers by the Great and the Battle: Trees Good, from Angus Deayton to Terry Waite.

WHAT IS BEHIND THIS MOOD THAT CAN TURN A

tripping tree-hugger into a media sensation overnight?

'Merrick' is one of the tree-huggers and Battle for the Trees is the story of the three months he spent in 1996 living in the protest camps on what is now the Newbury by-pass. The book is a celebration of the protesters' 'strong, loving, affirming culture. Merrick is clear in his own mind that environmental destruction is only one part of the reason for protest: 'We're not here 'cos we love trees. We're here 'cos we love life. We have a vision of how good it could and should be? (p123) And when Merrick looks out from the tree houses and the benders, he asks 'What real alternative is there? Nothing of worth' (p124). To emphasise the idea that there is no alternative, he pours scorn on LM for championing progress ('Whose progress?, he challenges, as though progress had to be a zerosum game); and for giving too much importance to ideas not something that Merrick could be accused of (p51). The destruction of the trees symbolises the protesters' disenchantment with industrial society.

Among the intellectuals keen to jump aboard the green bandwagon are the sociologists of risk. Surveying the 'postenvironmentalist' society from their ivory towers, the risk sociologists are critical of the 'technological' and 'disembedded' responses to environmental crisis presented by officialdom; they prefer the more "poetic' and 'situated' action of the Swampys and Merricks. Like Merrick, they are interested less in the actual impact of humanity upon nature, and more in the impact of environmental angst and protest upon human society. Like the journalists and the chattering classes they are impressed that people are taking action, that environmental pressure groups and charities can claim some 10 per cent of Britain's population as members, and they are keen to theorise about it. Ulrich Beck, the most influential of these sociologists, regards the new environmental activism as democratising politics (Risk, Environment and Modernity, p33). In the same vein in Reconstructing Nature Peter Dickens celebrates the role of 'lay knowledge' about the environment. Every opinion from those of South American tribesmen to those of British primary school children has something useful to offer, he claims, when it comes to our understanding of the environment that we all share. But this lay knowledge is little use if prejudice holds sway over the truth. There is something deeply cynical about the sociologists' sympathy with ecological politics. They too know that green arguments about the limits imposed by nature are not true.

And they are quite explicit about it. All of them recognise that it is the institutional crisis of modern capitalist society that engenders the consciousness of environmental crisis.

Beck emphasises the contribution to risk consciousness of transformations in social life wrought by industrial modernisation. He notes 'the exhaustion, dissolution and disenchantment of collective and group-specific sources of meaning', such as the belief in progress, class consciousness or religion, which has led to the 'individualising' of the way that society is experienced (p29). The crisis of legitimacy of the old institutions of the state and industrial society that bound people to collective loyalties, and the breakdown of trust suffered by those institutions, leads to the perception that society is out of control and unsurprisingly finds expression in the constant fear of catastrophe. As description, Beck's contribution is interesting, but where he fails is in attributing these social changes to the simply technical process of industrialisation, or 'modernisation'. Contrary to Beck's over-technical approach, there is nothing inherent in technology per se that could give rise to the crisis of legitimacy afflicting all of the institutions that have held society together. To really understand the culture of fear you have to look at how society has changed, rather than looking at new technologies. Beck's version lets the market off the hook, and pins the blame on human progress. Brian Wynne goes further than Beck. If popular distrust of politicians, governments, bureaucrats and experts is the source of the consciousness of risk and environmental protest then the reality, or indeed non-reality, of threats to the environ- The Social ment is not the issue: Construction of Nature 'the same basic social dynamics in the transformations of modernity could be occurring whether or not those risks objectively exist "out there". It is likely therefore that their explanatory role is not as large as presently assumed.? (Risk, Environment and Modernity, p57) Wynne has let the cat out of the bag. Environmentalist fears are impervious to the evidence because their origin is not an impending natural catastrophe. Rather those fears arise out of a crisis of legitimacy in society. Klaus Eder provides an unusually blunt formulation of the sociologists' view of natural limits: 'Nature is a scarce good only by definition.' (p204) In other words, these are not natural limits, but limits that arise out of the consciousness of scarcity.

But if the sociologists know that green ideas are really prejudices driven not by real threats to the environment, but

ENVIRONMENTALIST FEARS ARE IMPERVIOUS TO THE EVIDENCE BECAUSE THEIR ORIGIN IS NOT AN IMPENDING NATURAL CATASTROPHE. RATHER THOSE FEARS ARISE OUT OF A CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY IN SOCIETY by disenchantment with society and distrust of officialdom, why do they endorse the action taken on the basis of such prejudices? The answer is provided by Eder. They are simply not interested in the truth or falsity of green arguments. For Eder the great thing about ecological politics is that they provide an authoritative basis for the regulation of society in circumstances where existing social institutions lack legitimacy: 'to get the process of environmental self-regulation started we have to limit natural resources. Nature is a scarce good only by definition, and this definition has to be given by some institution. Within the model of formal rationality this is to be done by the state....The advantage of this solution is that the state does not have to find a true solution to the problem of creating scarcity. It only has to define the scarcity, and within these limits everybody can calculate the factual effects of his or her action. (p204) For Eder, then, not only are the limits on natural resources a matter of definition—society 'chooses' to see nature in that way-but they are derived from the prior need for self-regulation. It is the capacity of environmentalist thinking to provide the new ethical 'masterframe' for a regime of self-regulation that explains its centrality to contemporary society. The sociologists understand that natural limits are in reality no more than what postmodernists call a 'useful fiction', or what LM has criticised as the 'good lie. Natural limits are a fiction to be welcomed as a way of engendering 'collective action' and legitimating social institutions through environment-related ethical frames'. The central attraction of green thinking then is the way in which it forces people to 'calculate the factual effects' of their actions. Environmentalism restrains people.

This 'self-limitation' provides nothing less than the basis of a new moral order. Barbara Adam is explicit that the Enlightenment project of mastering nature for the good of man has failed. And 'where mastery fails, morals become an imperative' (Risk, Environment and Modernity, p99). It is not difficult to see the forms that this restraint takes.

Environmentalists have made austerity popular in a way that the Chancellor of the Exchequer could only dream of.

In his conclusion Eder is only unhappy that the state alone should take on the task of defining scarcity. Like Beck and the other sociologists, he proposes that the process should be 'democratised' by allowing everybody in on the act of promoting the lie according to their own particular cultural preconceptions. He is no doubt reassured by the antics of Merrick and Swampy and their German equivalents, but what does this 'democratisation' really mean?

Eder's book is called The Social Construction of Nature.

What he means when he says that nature is a social construct is this: 'Nature' is not to be taken literally, but seen instead as a projection of man's self-limitation. Like God or Nation, Nature is that higher value to which all human aspirations must be subordinated. 'Democratisation' here is a one-way process in which individuals subordinate their coarse self-interests to a 'greater good, but any wider aspirations to take control of our own lives are ruled out of order, still more so is the possibility of a human-centred, collective good.

Ulrich Beck and Brian Wynne contest the idea that the interests of humanity as a whole can even be established.

Wynne abuses such a notion as an 'abstract essentialist norm' and Beck rules such an approach out of order. Beck tries to sell the reader his theory of the 'risk society' as 'a theory of societal self-critique' which replaces the need for 'a critical theory of society.

BECK PROPOSES A DEMOCRACY IN WHICH 'THERE

arises a reciprocal critique of sectional rationalities and groups in society' (p33). Here 'the self-conceptions of those concerned' predominate, every one can criticise everybody else but society as a whole cannot be considered. As the editors of Risk, Environment and Modernity interpret him, 'critique is endemic to the risk society, and does not have to be introduced from outside by the sociologist' (pб). In other words, you can criticise other people for consuming too much, but God forbid that you should try to advance your own interests, or criticise the way that society as a whole is ordered.

There is a distressing contrast between the naive energy and enthusiasm of the Swampys and Animals trying to change the world by saving the trees, and the jaded cynicism of Reconstructing Nature the salaried radical intellectuals seeking to exploit their activism in the construction of a new moral order of selflimitation. But worse still is the irresponsibility of these weary 'thinkers' who bow down before the 'non-expert' authority of the energetic naïfs. Where once economists claimed in defence of the capitalist system that scarcity—the fact that there was not enough for everybody-was given in nature, today sociologists endorse the literal invention of scarcity in the face of an industrially advanced society that has the potential to abolish it.

The result of Beck's self-critical society is that the actions of a self-appointed minority in defence of 'the environment' are legitimate, but any democratically decided goals are immediately suspect. This drama is being played out in the construction of the new runway at Manchester airport. There environmental activists ensconced in tunnels are trying to prevent the work. In an exchange with the chair of the Manchester Airport Group, MP Graham Stringer, environmental activists denounced democracy as a sham. Stringer got it right when he replied, 'you deny democracy because you don't like the result' (Guardian, 17 May 1997).

Direct action is a marvellous thing when it is directed against a minority ruling class, as a challenge to its power. But here it is used by a self-appointed clique, against the majority, in the name of the fictitious greater good of the environment.

Peter Ray is speaking on the Decadent Capitalism and the Post-Material Economy course at The Next Step-(see p15)

50

READ ON

KILLING RAGE

Eamon Collins with Mick McGovern, Granta, £15.99 hbk Eamon Collins' book is an act of betrayal. The IRA intelligence officer turned informer (a 'tout') has written a book about his life which betrays his former comrades and sets up republicans for attack. Yet Killing Rage is compulsive reading. Collins provides a gripping, detailed account of his IRA activities in the South Down area of Northern Ireland in the early 198os, including his role in five killings. Collins uses the book to explain why he turned his back on the IRA, retrospectively presenting IRA activity as utterly futile. He recounts dozens of IRA operations in minute detail. He reveals his thoughts just prior to the attacks and his feelings afterwards. In one story he describes attending the funeral of a former work colleague whom he had set up for execution.

It is impossible not to be moved by the horror and tragedy of many of the attacks. For example the Catholic policeman very close to retirement, who turned around on his bar stool to be faced by the barrel of an IRA gun and made a desperate last plea, 'No boys not me' before being shot dead. Or the elderly Catholic officer who tried to fend off his killers with an umbrella as they shot him in front of his wife.

Fatalities in any war are tragic, but it is the absence of any attempt at an explanation for these killings which succeeds in emphasising the brutality and futility of this war. Collins seems to echo the sentiments of every politician and church leader who took to the TV screens after every killing in Northern Ireland to denounce the mindless barbarity of this or that atrocity.

Having dismissed British domination and the idea of a United Ireland as abstract concepts, Collins divorces IRA actions from any political context. Removing the republican movement from its social base in the nationalist working class and ignoring the roots of the conflict in British repression, Collins robs the IRA's 25-year war of any legitimacy or justification. Instead Collins puts it on a par with the kind of individual terrorism exemplified by the Baader-Meinhof gang—a small group of middle class activists with no social base who arranged 'hits' on the rich and powerful in Germany during the 1970s.

In many ways this book is a product of the current Irish peace process. Now that the IRA is little more than a stage army to promote Sinn Fein into all-party talks it is difficult to argue against Collins' claim that IRA violence has been futile. If people risked their own lives and took the lives of others merely to get a seat at the negotiating table, you can understand his cynicism. In fact this has not always been the case. From the start of the Irish War, Irish republicans fought for a clear goal: an end to the British occupation of Ireland and the destruction of the sectarian state of Northern Ireland.

M102 Killing Rage is perceptive in charting the degeneration of republican politics and the changing goals of the republican movement. These days the IRA are fighting for meaningless concessions like 'parity of esteem' and 'respect for identity'. This book presents the tragedy of the last 25 years in brutal detail, but the real tragedy of Northern Ireland is the failure of anti-imperialists to destroy the sectarian state. Collins is a repulsive character whatever way you look at it, but I have to say he tells a gripping story. Open this book up and I guarantee you will not be able to set it down until you have finished it.

Kevin Kelly

ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION!

Sabine Von Dirke, University of Nebraska Press, £42.75 hbk This is a painstaking account of the counterculture in West Germany from the subcultures of the fifties and the student movement of the sixties to the Greens of the eighties. Sabine Von Dirke provides valuable insights into the 'new sensibility' which accompanied the alienation of youth from mainstream society—what Herbert Marcuse described as the 'great refusal'. Her research into the celebration of irrationality (hence the title, All Power to the Imagination!), as a counterpoint to the ossified rationality of capitalist society and the Stalinist left, is particularly helpful.

Von Dirke is less helpful, however, in giving too much credence to the notion of 'new subjectivity'. It may be painful to admit, but the removal of aspiration to the narrow terrain of lifestyle politics might better be described as anti-subjectivity. Von Dirke, while recognising the chaos and turbulence in 'West Germany's countercultural movements', prefers to find a positive note to end on.

Andrew Calcutt

THE ROAD TO HELL: THE RAVAGING EFFECTS OF

FOREIGN AID AND INTERNATIONAL CHARITY

Michael Maren, Free Press, $25 hbk Michael Maren was a 'peace corps' volunteer working to promote American aid projects in Kenya and later Somalia. During the US intervention in Somalia his articles in the US press explained how aid helped to destroy the Somali economy, by putting Somali farmers out of business. Here Maren expands on his theme, showing that the superior stance of the aid workers towards their African charges rapidly degenerates into one of a new colonialism. Critical views of the new ideology of aid imperialism are thin on the ground, and this one is excellent, especially as it gives the insider's account. Despite a rather uncritical repetition of the aid establishment's demonisation of Rwanda's Hutus, you should read it.

James Heartfield

THE

POINT

CHANGE

scope to human creativity?

IS TO

IT 'Our reply to all of the pleas for caution and restraint is that until now humanity has only learned to crawl. We still live in a world that is not fit for people. Our problem is not that we are too ambitious, but that we continually hesitate about experimenting with new solutions. We need a revolution in outlook, so that we can continue to advance and give new

THE

-POINT

IS

CHANGE

A MANIFESTO

FOR A

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